Rick Tylka: I Traded L.A. for A Life Down Under

Rick Tylka grew up in a military family so frequent travel was the norm for him. Tired of the Los Angeles crowds and traffic he settled on Australia after checking out many other options.  He's now a dual citizen, having lived in Australia for as long as he lived in the United States.  Listen to his exciting journey and unique perspective on life and his experience living Down Under.

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Transcript

Commercial: [00:00:02] Welcome. You are listening to the overseas life redesign podcast where you'll hear fine, relaxed, and inspirational interviews with people who are really living the dream. I'm Dawn Fleming and attorney turned alchemist and your host for the show coming to you from the tropical island paradise of East level net us Mexico. Listen to conversations with courageous souls who step out of their comfort zone and designed a new way of life. They'll share their experiences, wisdom and offer practical steps you can take to redesign your life overseas. Listen, and you'll believe if you can dream it, you can achieve it.

Dawn : [00:00:43] Ok, I'm here today with Rick Tulka, and he's actually on the other side of the globe and down under in Australia, and I'm so thrilled that you were able to find some time to chat with me today. Rick, welcome to Overseas Podcast. Thank you very much. Awesome. So you are an American.

Rick Tulka: [00:01:04] Yeah, I  have dual citizenship now. So since 1990, Americans are allowed to have one of their citizenship. So I have Australian citizenship and US still.

Dawn : [00:01:15] Ok, so you've been there for a while.

Rick Tulka: [00:01:18] I've moved here in nineteen ninety and then took like a year or two to get the time in the country before you can become a citizen. So probably citizenship since about 92.

Dawn : [00:01:29] Wow. So almost 30 years. So you're like almost an Aussie. I mean you are not citizenship.

Rick Tulka: [00:01:35] I've only just been here as long as I've been in the US have been in Australia now.

Dawn : [00:01:42] Fabulous.

Dawn : [00:01:43] Ok, so cool. Well, we'll unpack that in a moment, but I kind of like to start at the beginning. Just I don't know, I'm a lawyer. I like order and logical order. So tell me about how you ended up in Australia in the first place. Is that and then the other question I would have is, have you lived other places overseas or I'm just in Australia and. 

Rick Tulka: [00:02:08] I'll do a quick where we are. My dad was in the military, so I'll just quickly run through all the places that I ended up. So I was born in Texas. Then we moved to Arizona, then we moved to Ohio, then we moved to Virginia. And then in Virginia, my dad retired from the Air Force and we moved back to California. So both of my parents originated from California. So that's where they had their families and so started high school. And I've been in California and that's where I like I did so high school, college. And then my first job was working in Los Angeles. And then I did a tour of Australia in like eighty-eight. Then I did all the paperwork to try and migrate to Australia and then migrate in nineteen ninety. And then of course I've lived here for, that long and then when I was in Los Angeles and working I traveled a lot. So because from Los Angeles to travel was really cheap. So you know, Hawaii a couple of times, Jamaica three or four times, you're probably four or five times. So a lot of different places. And then like my sister was working overseas a bit. So like when she lived in Germany, I stayed in Germany for a month. And when she lived in France, I think it was there. Three or four months, so I've spent a lot of time overseas before I move here, and then I was kind of getting sick of L.A. because L.A. is a great place to live, but it's a lot of people. So your whole life is going to go to B. It's like, well, OK, what time of the day is it? All right. That's bad traffic. So either go before the peak or after the peaks, like traveling on the peak. It's just a waste of time because it's a slow-moving parking lot going anywhere. So, you know, if you want to go anywhere in the week and you leave work early if you want to, it's just any way, after a while, you just get tired of it. So.

Dawn : [00:04:09] Oh, yeah, we know that in L.A. you don't go by Miles, you go by time. Right.

Rick Tulka: [00:04:15] It's not like if I wanted to go skiing for the weekend, I would tell my boss I'm going away for the weekend and that's fine. So you'd leave work at like 3:00 in the afternoon just because they know it's like when it's his turn, he goes early. And if I left at 3:00 in the afternoon, it would take me six hours to get to this place was just three miles away, like at Mammoth Mountain. And if you left it your normal time, which is supposed to be five, it would take you just two hours to get out of Los Angeles instead of like forty-five minutes. So it would take like eight hours to get there. So like everyone to it's a week weekend. You want to go early. Everyone just looks the other way and you disappear. Right. So. So when I got to Australia I never got oh man. The traffic was bad. I, I waited to like today to get to work and I just left. Right. I live five miles from work in Los Angeles and it was 30 traffic lights and a rush hour. The normal rush hour. It was about forty-five minutes to get to work. That was normal. Wow. And in the later years of it, I had a motorcycle in Los Angeles. You allowed me to go down the lane solo and ride my motorcycle and it would take me half an hour to get to work. So if it was raining in the morning, I wouldn't take my motorcycle. But as long as it wasn't raining in the morning to take my motorcycle, so on the rainy days, I'd be depressed because, you know, I knew it was going to take me forever to get to work because I'd be in a car.

Dawn : [00:05:44] Sure. so what? What's your professional background? What did you do for work?

Rick Tulka: [00:05:49] I went to uni. I have a degree in electrical and computer engineering, which I used when I was worked at Hughes Aircraft, so designed like radar bits for fighter aircraft. But when I got to Australia and goes, well, what do you do that in Australia? Because they don't do that in Australia, it's like that's not it's not a local occupation, viable career choice. And yeah. Yeah, but I did fine for a couple of years, has worked well for more than a couple of years. I was working for some companies that did aerial surveying so we would fly around in airplanes and helicopters at really low altitudes and, and look for minerals using magnetometers and spectrometers. And that was the pretty high tech that I did that for a few years. But it wasn't a very safe occupation because you are flying really low over like terrain. It's like, well, like I did sometimes in PMG, like the mountains. We had this one line, Steve, flying these great lines, you know, up and back up and back. And this one gridline started at seven thousand feet and went to. Think was eleven or twelve thousand feet, and then you would turn the helicopter around and come down that and we only had one oxygen mask about. Nine or ten thousand feet. I would like, like, you know, not suffocate, but like go to sleep because the oxygen masks would be on the pilot. So every line I go to sleep for about two minutes to me, I'd wake up, I hit the button so he knows which way to go back. And then when as soon as we go down a couple of thousand feet where the oxygen comes back, you'd wake up back up again. Fine.

Dawn : [00:07:33] Oh, for heaven's sake. Yeah, it was safe.

Rick Tulka: [00:07:39] Well, so back to the safety things I've had. So I knew some, like the helicopter pilots, would transition in and out as soon as their shifts came and gone. So like I knew a few of those pilots that had died, I know a few people that worked on some of the airplanes that I've worked with who died in a few crashes because like when anything, the airplanes were at the maximum height would be three hundred feet above the ground and the lowest up ever done. I did a helicopter survey that was seven years.

Rick Tulka: [00:08:08] So certainly the first day here, like literally because the helicopter flies, it's leaning forward, so the first day you're staring at the ground like, oh man, that's close. And then, like, after half an hour, you just get used to it. But the first day. But that was the lowest. Yeah. So so anything happens, like you're you're in the ground like I need time to recover and stuff. So luckily I did have one close one, but I didn't ever luckily crash because I'm still here. But like I said, I've had friends who like but one was in a two-engine plane. One of the engines stopped at that altitude. They didn't have time to recover. So that crashed at a single-engine. One in the company I was with, they were firing over water and they ditched into the water. Then I was doing a ferry flight with the survey helicopter to base camp. And it just fueled up and we're heading up this little mountain and the helicopter starts shaking the pieces. He set it down. Luckily, there was like one riverbank there because we just flowed like an hour over the jungle and PMG. And if you think there's a clearing in PNG, you've never flown over. It is a solid wall of jungle and it's just topography up and down and up and down mountains. For a local to go from one village to another sometimes will take three or four days and it'll maybe be 10 miles away because they've got to go up a mountain. It's maybe eight thousand feet, and then down the mountain, it's eight thousand feet. So that's. But anyway, so what? We're flying for one hour. There's nothing to stop this. If anything happens, like, you know, you're just going to land in the jungle and it's going to be pretty ugly. But luckily, we just fueled up we took off this one-piece, broke off the rotor of the tail. And man, you would think someone had shot it because of the whole chopper, you couldn't even see the instruments. Luckily, you got it down and we all got out. Go who didn't feel good.

Dawn : [00:10:23] So did you have to hike out of there or what did they. Not somebody else.

Rick Tulka: [00:10:28] It happened very luckily just on takeoff. So he just cleared the landing pad and just passed the landing pad. There was a riverbank. So he put it down there like he had to go down as quick as he could because if he flew for five minutes longer, it would have broken the tail off. And then you're really done. But anyway, so he got it down the riverbank. Turn it off. We all got out, had a good breath and breath, and walked one hundred meters back to the landing pad, which was a base camp. So they. Oh, OK. So you can stay there. So yeah, we just camp that well, stay there. And then they had to call in a whole other helicopter with a mechanic to come and fix the mess.

Rick Tulka: [00:11:05] I Oh wow. OK, so you left that career behind.

Rick Tulka: [00:11:12] Yeah. That was like my first big job in Perth and then after that like well I don't know, I had a couple of little dogs and then my last big job was for 14 years I was driving around a truck selling tools as a tool salesman, like a snap on to like to mechanics. I didn't want to name the company, but. 

Dawn : [00:11:35] That was my husband was a mechanic. And so he said that and they told us. And yeah. So I was the one and I dated the guy when I was in law school that that was a mechanic as well. So I know all about that. They did there was a set of rules that were out there.

Rick Tulka: [00:11:53] So, unfortunately, I wasn't the best salesman. So after 14 years, they said you aren't selling enough. So onto something else.

Dawn : [00:12:04] Oh, OK. All right. So let's back up. So what happened in particular brought you to Australia? Was it work or not?

Rick Tulka: [00:12:14] No, no, no, no. I was just looking for someplace less crowded than Los Angeles. I've done a tour of Australia the year before I moved and I said, well, I'll ask Australia if I can migrate there. If they let me. And if they don't let me. My second choice was going to be San Diego. I'll just come back to I don't like Australia. I'll come back and I'll look for work in San Diego. But finding work in San Diego is pretty hard because it was a very desirable place, had a little bit less traffic. Right. But it was a nicer climate than Los Angeles and stuff. So it was actually more difficult getting work in San Diego than it was in Los Angeles.

Dawn : [00:12:55] Ok, so so you just sort of randomly picked Australia then or.

Rick Tulka: [00:13:02] Yeah, pretty randomly. It has a similar climate like I like Los Angeles climate. You know, it's not too hot, not too cold. But one thing I miss about Los Angeles is they had big mountains. He could go skiing in the summer somewhere in the winter, whereas the biggest mountain, Australia, is Kosciusko. It's five thousand feet. Well, in Los Angeles, the small mountain was like 6000 feet Big Bear, and that was like one hour away. So, like, it weakens it. You drive up there, go skiing and then come back and like, you could go to the beach the same year. But in Perth, we have I think the highest place would be maybe two thousand feet. And if it's a really cold winter day, you might get centimeter snow that lasts a couple of hours. It'll be on the front page. Oh, look, we had snow in Western Australia, so no skiing. No skiing in Western Australia, there are people there's a lot of people in Perth who have never seen snow easily. Half the population like, you know, they would snow like a will stick your head in the freezer and grab some of that ice that's in there. That's snow. Yeah, but imagine you're freezing your ass because it's all cold, as you know. Right. But I'd like to see it. They go well after half an hour of freezing. You want to.

Dawn : [00:14:26] Cool. So so let me ask you about that. The culture. So obviously as a military kid, you were used to moving around a lot. You probably got good at acclimating to new cultures and new environments and meeting new people. But obviously, when you make that big of a move from the United States, Los Angeles to Australia, there's an adjustment that. 

Rick Tulka: [00:14:54] You have friends but you don't have. I don't have lifelong friends, you know, have I don't know. I have no friends that I'm in contact with in high school anymore. More one friend. I'm in contact with the university still. But for me transitioning, you have a group of friends and then kind of lose contact with them, because back then, before the Internet, all you could do is either a phone call or letter. And I wasn't good at doing either of those.

Dawn : [00:15:26] Now, it has changed things dramatically, hasn't it? The ability to keep track of people compared to, say, when we were growing up and we didn't have those capabilities to be able to do that.

Rick Tulka: [00:15:39] So there's a few people reconnected a little bit with like my cousin who lives in Florida. He's done a lot of stuff with Facebook and stuff. So chat just a little bit with him, but not very good in the communication department. It's like if someone's in the room, it's all right. But just a strong introvert who's happy to be with me.

Dawn : [00:16:04] Well, cool. So so then when you did move to Australia, did you what did you find socially? I mean, did you where you really did you make an effort to meet new people or.

Rick Tulka: [00:16:20] Most of the people I have met have been friends of girlfriends because they've got their lifelong circle of friends. And so I'm brought into that relationship. So that's so like. Yeah, I would say that, you know, I meet a few people and stuff, but the really long relationships have been friends of the families of my girlfriends.

Dawn : [00:16:48] Ok, so and a way to describe, and then do you travel back to the United States on any kind of regular basis, or do you pretty much hang out in Australia?

Rick Tulka: [00:16:58] The last time I went to the US, I had to renew my passport, which had expired by two years. So I renewed it and I went to the US and then I've looked at my passport, I don't know, last year or whatever and say, oh, now it's about to expire in a year. And I had one trip to the US on it in ten years because it's ten years for the right thing. So it's such a big trip from Perth to get to Los Angeles where half of my family still is. But my parents got divorced while I was in uni, so my mom and dad anyway. So the family's a little bit desperate now. The family's everywhere. I got a little sister in London, not London, England. My big sister was living in Brisbane. She still has a house in Brisbane, her husband and family still in Brisbane, and she's working in San Diego at the moment. My brother still lives in Los Angeles. My mom still lives in Los Angeles. And I've forgotten anyone and me in Perth. That's all for the family.

Rick Tulka: [00:18:08] Have you have they visited you? Uh, let's see. My brother's been to Perth two or three times. My sister's when she lived in Brisbane, was really good about coming over. Like, what we do is like, oh, if I'm going to Bali, I tell her I'd give her like a half a year notice and she would meet you there or meet me in Perth. She spent maybe six months in Perth. What she was doing some temporary work. OK, so we would get together more regularly as the distances were closer. So. Oh, the other reason, uncle, to us it's like it's more than twenty-four hours to get there. So like is really do you want to go to Perth, to Melbourne or Perth. You got to go to. Some East Coast city to get a flight to Los Angeles, so it would be OK, first to say Melbourne, that's a five-hour flight, then you got to wait for the next plane than to be, say, Melbourne to Sydney. Which one way? It's 14 hours in another. The other way it's 12 hours. I don't remember which way. One way is a long way. So that's two flights. By the time you add up the flights and the time in between and the time to get to the airport, it's coming out to close to 20 hours. Twenty four hours. Yeah. You start whatever plane you end up on in Melbourne. If you go to Melbourne, go to Melbourne, out of Sydney or out of Brisbane, if you start with breakfast, you go breakfast, lunch, dinner, breakfast, or if you start with dinner, you go dinner, breakfast, lunch, dinner.

Dawn : [00:19:37] Yeah, that's a hike.

Rick Tulka: [00:19:40] And it's. And you know, I live there, so I'm not. Doesn't do a whole lot for me going back there.

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Dawn: [00:21:24] Welcome back to the Overseas Life Redesign podcast, thank you so much for being here, and we invite you to subscribe, if you like, what you hear.

Rick Tulka: [00:21:34] Where we traveled to most of the time for holidays now is from Perth to Bali, which is only three and a half hour flight. Before covid, we were getting flights, sometimes 200 dollars round trip. I think our record, once we got like a really good specimen, was like a hundred bucks. Now one hundred and thirty dollars round trip never looked at. But why now? With Kodet, it will probably go back to like eight hundred dollars round trip or something.

Dawn : [00:22:02] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I went and chatting with you. You said when you said Bali because I'm thinking like you know cha-ching that's expensive travel. Right. And then you said no actually there are some really expensive places that you can.

Rick Tulka: [00:22:17] It's exactly. It's every if you want a cheap place you could stay at a place. It's literally 20 bucks a night. You know, it's got an air conditioning pool, nice, a little fridge. You know, it's like a normal hotel, pretty cheap Sure, and across the street. It's a place for 400 bucks a night. And then there are these places where you can get these villas right on the beach that are four thousand dollars. So if you want to spend it, they'll take it. Sure.

Dawn : [00:22:42] So it doesn't have to be that way. It can be exactly. Yeah. That it's affordable there. So. Well, actually, my next question was going to be, what's your favorite thing about living in Australia? And maybe that's it. But the travel to other exotic places nearby. But is there are there other things that you love about living in Australia?

Rick Tulka: [00:23:05] Oh, well, like every weekend I live in near Fremantle, like it's a 15, 20-minute walk into Fremantle. Take your car. It's literally like two minutes to drive in. And there's. Probably 10, 15 pubs in Fremantle, so every weekend will go in and have a. Four or five drinks. And so but but but we don't like during the week, it's like, oh right. No more drinking during the week. So we're dry on the week and then the weekend we'll go out. So Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday night, we're going into the pubs and restaurants and stuff. So it's quite nice because that's one of Perth has like two big entertainment districts and Fremantle's one of them. OK, but you know, as we get older, we come home an earlier year. So like live music or whatever they have, they have bands there. You have two nightclubs. OK, we still got two. And yeah. So you can the pubs will go on the weekends till midnight, maybe in the summer to 1:00 a.m. and then if you really feel like going for it, there's, there's a nightclub that goes to probably 6:00 in the morning, you know, and my age group, it's six in the morning.

Dawn : [00:24:18] Usually when you're getting up and it's definitely the case here, like if we're if you like,

Rick Tulka: [00:24:28] I think last Friday we were home at nine o'clock, like my girlfriend. Her name's Freddie, even though it sounds like a guy tonight, her real name's Florence, but she doesn't like that name. So she goes by Freddie. So Freddie comes by at six o'clock, will be having her first drink at six 15, and typically will be home by nine o'clock and the same thing Saturday, Sunday home at nine o'clock and just kind of hang out for a few hours. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes we'll have to drink, sometimes we have for drinks, and if the mood hits upswept six. But that's normal. And so that's like and then like some maybe we'll eat out that night. That's what pizza and eating. So stuff like, you know, we're spoiled for restaurants and we got really great Italian but there's Thai food and one or two Mexican. That's not nice Mexican here.

Dawn : [00:25:25] And I don't think I would be at high school.

Rick Tulka: [00:25:29] It's like, have you ever had East Coast Mexican in the US?

Dawn : [00:25:34] No, I have. I don't like their idea of a Mexican.

Rick Tulka: [00:25:40] Is this like in Australia, in East Coast, in the US is three different colors of sour cream. And then they'll put it in like a, I don't know, a hard taco shell and a bit of meat. And I go, yeah, that's Mexican. And, you know, which was the flavor was it's the good stuff. Yeah. Then you get over to, you know like California has some really good man.

Dawn : [00:26:04] Oh yeah. Well, there's plenty of Mexican cooks there, that's why. Yeah.

Rick Tulka: [00:26:08] Well, like the best Mexican San Diego, because they got all the Mexicans that worked there and they got the better foods because when you get into Mexico, they can't afford the good cuts of meat so they don't serve the good cuts of meat. So unless you go to some really fancy restaurants you eat and a lot of gristle and you know, it's good food, but it's better in San Diego, like, you know, I still miss a good burrito like that.

Dawn : [00:26:32] Yeah.

Rick Tulka: [00:26:33] Not possible to get a good margarita here. Yeah, but but but again, go back to like you have Australia prices and you got, you know, like Mexico prices. So like a margarita here would be on average. 15 to 18 dollars a glass.

Dawn : [00:26:54] No, really,

Rick Tulka: [00:26:57] When I going to Fremantle, they have some wine I love like all we have fancy beers. One of the pubs I go to has 15 or 18 taps,

Dawn : [00:27:08] OK

Dawn : [00:27:08] And so every week it'll have three different new beers, like different things. Yeah. Craft beers. And I think my record for a price on a pint, I think it was about 20 dollars, maybe twenty-two dollars because they go all right, before I serve you that point, you got to be aware that this is going to be, you know, because they were getting so many people were getting the pint put in front of them and they're going, what the that much more. How much a cheap pint in  Perth. Cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep pint would be eight dollars.

Dawn : [00:27:45] No kidding. Wow. I had no idea it was that expensive there.

Rick Tulka: [00:27:50] That's cheap. So consequently you go into Bolly and you get a big bottle of beer which is like seven hundred and fifty mills and that'll be. On average, about three dollars. So, you know, easily, easily half the price of proof, but you don't have the choice of beers when you're in Bali, you know, basically just get there Bintang one each other, but they're all pretty average.

Dawn : [00:28:19] So is it just Perth it's that expensive or is it that expensive in Australia.

Rick Tulka: [00:28:24] Her purse a little bit more expensive, but even if you were in Sydney you'd probably be paying a cheap point and Sydney would probably be six dollars.

Dawn : [00:28:34] Well, it's funny to be talking about this because I've done some interviews and especially with sailors, and they judge how expensive a place is by the cost of beer. Like that's the metric they use. So it's kind of interesting that that's what we're talking about here is beer as sort of a gauge of how expensive a place to live.

Rick Tulka: [00:28:58] We have a very active port and we used to have the U.S. Navy on a regular port call to come into Fremantle and they would come in two times a year or something like that. And it was always nice, you know because it's nice in your town. Liveline in, American sailors are very well behaved compared to Australians. Australians get too many beers and they get a bit loud and stuff.

Dawn : [00:29:21] I have heard that.

Rick Tulka: [00:29:24] But the funny one is when the American sailors would come in, they'd always get the talk from their commanding officer and he would go, Whatever you do, don't go drinking with the Australians. You will never win. Don't do it. You're being warned. Don't do it. It's not safe. And you know yourself. What do you mean? Because, like, our beer is a little bit stronger on average, like an average beer year five percent. And I think the US average beers, I don't know, three percent, four percent, I don't know. But anyway, lower. So like a little in here can drink significantly more than the Americans because we're used to a little bit higher strength, I guess, or something.

Dawn : [00:30:06] Tolerance. Yeah. So so when they get here they're warned do not get in a drinking thing with little stress and it will not be a happy ending for them. Well, so it's one of their big, big warning things was of a chuckle about it. It's like, come on guys, buy a few drinks. Ok,

Dawn : [00:30:23] how funny.

Rick Tulka: [00:30:27] So you can tell by that and you can tell by their haircuts. You know, they got that little zippy.

Dawn : [00:30:32] Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I'm sure you can probably see them coming.

Rick Tulka: [00:30:36] They're not allowed to wear the uniforms anymore. Is that right? Well, you know, the terrorists say they don't want to be targeted.

Dawn : [00:30:42] I see, I see.

Rick Tulka: [00:30:44] Because before the terrorism they would always wear their whites. And it was really nice. And you could tell from miles away from others are well, well behaved. So I have no complaints against them. I have some funny Australians do some funny things, like the Australians somehow get a rental car under a fake name. And one of the scams is one of the Navy guys, and they sell them a car and a Navy guy go, oh, oh, wow. I can you know, I don't know how exactly it works. But anyway, they get these dopes, you know, think they're buying a car for five hundred bucks or something. And then this guy would walk away with the money. And this guy basically has a stolen car rental car. Oh, dear. Yeah. Yeah. So you hear all these you go on the streets to some of the scams that happened in you know, going back, you know, probably twenty years ago when they couldn't track things as well online. But how poor guys are they got loads of money. They don't know the difference there.

Dawn : [00:31:45] So have you had an opportunity to travel around to different parts of Australia?

Rick Tulka: [00:31:49] When when I used to do the aerial surveying, I've been to like most places that Australians haven't been to, like I spent times in Halls Creek, Mount Eyes to Gera, Cloncurry, have to places. I can't even remember the names. It's like a tiny, tiny little place. Because when you do aerial surveying, obviously there's no point in surveying over a city because you can't make a mine there. Right. So so they see it is a lot of remote camps. OK, you would go in because you want to make your base as close to certain areas. You can't see you're not wasting fuel getting to the area because when you're flying survey in an airplane, it gives the endurance of a plane of maybe seven hours and you'd be six hours just going back and forth, back and forth, and when you run out of fuel. So you have to go stop and get it. And then when you're in a helicopter, you can only usually do about an hour. Then you're going to film. Yeah, go again. And so in a helicopter full, you might stop on a busy day, maybe six or seven times refuel in an airplane. You just do like a lunchtime refuel and go on.

Dawn : [00:33:04] Yeah. So I guess what I'm trying to get at is if you have had the opportunity to have a sense of the country, like, I guess what I'm comparing it to is the United States, you know, how the United States really isn't homogenous, like depending on where you are in the United States, it's almost like a collection of a whole bunch of different countries. And I'm wondering if your experience with Australia is similar, if it's more of a homogenous type of culture, you do find a lot of differences amongst the different regions and the different major cities.

Rick Tulka: [00:33:41] It's similar to the US in that, you know, from coast to coast, you can pick an accent and stuff like that. So I'm still pretty good at like when someone's on the news from America, you know, go, that guy's from New York or Boston or Florida. You go from what? You can hear the accent. You know, the funny one, though, that's Canadian, because, you know, like him, say it seems what, because now I got to pick a Canadian. Sure, sure. So there are some slight accents, like an Australian from Queensland has a little bit of an accent you can pick up, but it's in a Melbourne has a slightly like a nasally kind of New York thing. But it's hard to pick out. It would be like a few of the words with their short words and be a little bit different. So like a guy from Queensland might say, a Sunnies and maybe they wouldn't say Sunny's in Perth with Sunnies, you know, sunglasses, everything in the US long terms. And like no one would say, turn the air conditioner on. Here they go, get the AC on or, you know, turn the evap on or whatever. Some sort of things. If you can make it short, you shorten it here. So it's not like a different word. It's just a short version. So everything short, you know, get the sun. But the AC on the. I know you can't think of the words anymore when you use them all the time, but everything's so slightly different. But the big difference between the US and Australia is everyone lives in the coastal regions. So once you get 50 kilometers inland, it's Perth. Australia is just kind of a desert. It's a little up north not it has a bit of jungle and stuff. But when you're the bottom half of Australia, as soon as you go 50 K's inland, it's pretty barren. So there's just the cities go from being one hundred thousand people to a normal place. Might be a thousand people or you get a small place, might be two hundred people. OK, it's pretty, pretty sparsely populated. So like you'll get a few signs going. You no services for two hundred kilometers. Yeah. It's a warning. You know, if you haven't got a full tank of gas up there, don't go past this line because nothing's going to help you. Right. And now there are a few places where you get that. But like to give you know, it's a huge place, just our state. When we were driving back from Queensland, once we got to the border and I could we're almost home. Two days later, we got back home. Wow. Because to go from our border to Perth would be maybe fifteen hundred kilometers or something like that. Wow. And that's just where the biggest state, Western Australia.

Dawn : [00:36:32] OK,

Rick Tulka: [00:36:32] but, you know, all along that way there was. Would've been 10 towns that whole way.

Dawn : [00:36:42] It's very desolate in between,

Rick Tulka: [00:36:44] There are just enough towns to have a place to sleep and get fuel sort of thing. And because it's. 

Dawn : [00:36:50] Right to the coastal towns, are they very similar to each other or are there substantial differences culturally?

Rick Tulka: [00:37:02] There's a lot of differences like like you go three or four hours south, you get to Margaret River that has a very touristy name. It's a wine country and has a lot of tourist-oriented things. So it has a very famous West for Australia. It's very famous. You say Margaret River, everyone knows it. And it's a really pretty place. It's got a bit more vegetation than Perth does. A bit cooler because it's south. But it's still the same people are up in Perth, it's just a different work down there, less city work. So you work on the vineyards, maybe cut in vines or maybe more of a tradesman or something like that. So there are not the city jobs down there. But that's mean when you get out of the big metropolis and the jobs get a lot more rural, maybe, farming or something like that versus working in an office building.

Dawn : [00:38:02] Right. So now it doesn't sound like it's too diverse as like I said, as compared to the United States, where you almost have like, you know, you almost feel like you're in a different country sometimes when you go from one part of the country to another, say, California to Appalachia, for example, or something like that.

Rick Tulka: [00:38:23] Yeah, the biggest shocks are when you leave, as the metropolis and you end up in a little town like, oh, yeah, the outback, you call a one pub town. It's like, yeah, sure. Where else can you get a drink an hour that way? Or really you go and there are some guys who live on farms and don't go shopping once a week and it's not the two, three-hour drive to get to where it's not a shopping center. It's just a glass shop. A place. Yeah. Maybe the big shops are five or six hours away for them. Yeah. Yeah. Depending on where you're you know, some of the farms are quite isolated for the farmers. You know, I really feel sorry for them because it's a very isolated life.

Dawn : [00:39:10] Yeah. Well but if that's that's what they're used to and they don't, they don't know that they're missing anything.

Rick Tulka: [00:39:18] So I couldn't take that. So like some of these when I was doing the jobs, like in Halls Creek, I was there for three or four months and I knew what to expect. It was I think it was two hundred people who lived in Halls Creek and the surrounding Aboriginals that that kind of use that place for food and lodging, all that came from anyway. They were about two thousand of those. But you didn't see them as much as the white people because they didn't really live in town. So let's give you an idea of how small but in that place. Yeah, as I said, it's been a few months, they're doing the living and surveying and they lived in a hotel. Sorry was your next question.

Dawn : [00:39:59] Oh, no, no, I mean, it's been very interesting. I guess what I'm wondering is what do you see on the horizon for yourself? Do you think you'll probably stay where you're at or are you considering other options or what do you see on the horizon for you?

Rick Tulka: [00:40:19] There are two things like we are we have spent a lot of time in Bali, so I've probably been there 20, 30 times. My girlfriend's probably been there 40, 50 times. We're actually considering maybe getting a place there because you can get we've seen places for like the whole year. It's like fifteen thousand dollars, which is a very nice place. And then there are places that are more and there are places that are less. So we're looking at that. You wouldn't. As a white person, you don't have the right to own property in Asia. You'll have the right to rent a term lease. Yeah, well, you can rent, obviously, but you can also own like you can buy a property. And for a white person, you might have in Bali, for instance, you might have a 50-year lease so they can kick you out for so long term. Long term. Yeah, but there's still the government who say, all right, now we don't like your government and all of you have to leave because of the government over. Yeah. So it's you never have the right to stay there if the government wants to overrule. But anyway, that's just a trade-off. You can still struggle. I'm still struggling. So I could always come back to Australia, but I'm still trying to get an online presence and build it up, which is, you know, I'm going to probably a bit too slow at it, but I'm trying. So at the moment, I'm doing a bit of high and coaching stuff with Russell. So, Russell Brunson, I'm sure. Absolutely. And if I can't get a presence kind of following his model with with with his people coaching my assumptions, which is good, but still I'm running into the same thing. Where do this and don't skip that step or why haven't you gone to the next step? We said don't skip that step. We'll do that step. Well, I haven't done it yet.

Dawn : [00:42:25] Right. But the process for sure. For sure. Yeah.

Rick Tulka: [00:42:30] It's like and there's a lot of barriers. You've got to put yourself in places before, you know, it's an introvert. You don't want to go.

Dawn : [00:42:39] Yeah. I mean, in the end, thank you for saying that because I've been working for two years on my project here and finally feel like I've found a model that works for me. And, you know, I've tried on multiple coaches and programs and courses and all of that stuff. And I've fortunately, I have a very supportive husband who is like, whatever you think, dear, you know, I mean, he just trust my instincts. And I feel like everything that I've done over the last two years has served its purpose. In other words, I've learned something very valuable that has helped me get to the next level. And it never goes as fast as we want it to. It's never as easy as we want it to be. But yet I kind of feel like, you know, there is sort of a grand scheme to these things and we are right where we're supposed to be. And it's only literally within the past couple of weeks that I've been really excited about where things are and how they've been going. And like I said, I started well over two years ago on this journey of figuring out what's my brand, what's my message, what's my market, and all of that. And it just takes time. And and and sometimes, you know, I tried other target markets and other things and it just didn't feel right. And I guess that's what I would say is, you know, go with your gut, you know, and if it resonates with you if it really feels like it's good and you're I'm still getting out of my comfort zone every time I go. And you know, I know I can do this, but I've got to do it. And you just kind of punch through it.

Rick Tulka: [00:44:40] And I'm still trying to find my voice. And yes, once you find it, I can see the power in it. Like you say, I've been doing this for years of study and years of courses and years of listening, and you can see it all, but sooner or later, you've got to start doing it and I haven't done enough of it. And so now I'm starting to do the painful and embarrassing steps of making yourself public and making yourself known.

Dawn : [00:45:05] And, yeah, you know, and I love that. I know we both have done the one final challenge, I think a couple of times. And that that piece of it where they say publish every day and you're like, what hell am I going to publish? Right. I mean, I don't even know what to say, you know, but forcing yourself to do it, the consistency, I can really see the value of that. And actually, that's how this podcast started, was it really came out of that one final challenge where they said you need to publish and pick something. And I started blogging and I was like, yeah, and I'm a great writer, but it just it didn't seem like it was the right method of communicating for me. I just felt like this. The audio program, so and you have just launched a podcast, you just said dabbling in that and there's. 

Rick Tulka: [00:45:58] I think my intro and outro are longer than my episode, but it's like just start doing it to do it. And I'm hoping as I get more comfortable because I have to go through and I'll do I have to go through and edit the pauses because I just don't remember the next thing to say. And it's just. 

Dawn : [00:46:19] That's OK. And that's the beauty of it. I mean, I saw the acidy and you know, I said to it's great, it's great, it's free and it's easy and trusts me, I mean, I still go through and edit out my Elm's. It's just the way that that's how people talk. And I probably over edit for what I really need to, but that's just the attorney and me that says it's got to be a perfect while. Well. 

Rick Tulka: [00:46:46] Yeah, it'll be nice and fluid and I can just carry on a normal conversation and actually not have to think of what do I want to talk about next and not make it sound like you're in the pub instead of like you're embarrassed and you don't want to finish your conversation, but.

Dawn : [00:47:03] Well, good for you for doing that. And like I said, I'm in my thirties somewhere episodes of podcasting and I still feel like I've got a lot of room for improvement. But I also know I've come a long way from the very beginning and that's kind of what you have to focus on, is the progress. And what is the saying? Our goal is progress, not perfection.

Rick Tulka: [00:47:30] Exactly. To getting past perfection. You've got to just forget it.

Dawn : [00:47:35] Well, especially that's what engineer types or attorney types. I mean, we have this idea that isn't real and just says, you know what, forget about that.

Rick Tulka: [00:47:45] And that word, do the whole thing again. Oh, yeah.

Dawn : [00:47:49] Hypercritical.

Rick Tulka: [00:47:49] Just part of it. Put it out there. And the other one is don't go back and listen to it. It's like, well,

Dawn : [00:47:57] When you put it out there, you have to write and you don't do that. That's how we earn. And now actually that was one of the best pieces of advice that I read when I was studying how to do a podcast. Is it said they said always for at least your first ten episodes, do your own editing because it will make you a better interviewer. And I think that was gold to say instead of it's easy to hire that stuff out, but when you have to listen to it, you really do notice things. And it might it's sometimes it's really cringe-worthy. In the beginning, yes. You're just like, oh, why did I say that? But, you know, that's the beauty of editing. You can cut it all out. So just being sitting with the idea that what it's it's a process and we're all going to get better. And, you know, none of us, none of us are perfect. So think about that. Well, I have one last question. And that is, is there anything I didn't ask you that you want to add to kind of sum it up?

Rick Tulka: [00:49:04] No, I don't.

Dawn : [00:49:05] OK, OK, that's totally acceptable answer, I always ask that because sometimes people do say, oh yeah, I forgot about this or whatever. So I always like to kind of end on that question.

Rick Tulka: [00:49:18] And that's supposed to be the Segway to plug in your thing.

Dawn : [00:49:22] And you are certainly welcome to do that. If you have anything websites or links to podcasts or anything like that that you want to forward to me, I am more than happy to include them.

Rick Tulka: [00:49:34] If someone if they're interested, they'll they can look up. Rick, telecom's signposted. They'll find what they need to find a purpose for making it as easy as I can. Awesome.

Dawn : [00:49:45] Well, thank you so much for your time today, Rick. I really do appreciate it. And I wish you the best in your future endeavors.

Rick Tulka: [00:49:53] Thank you. And I look forward to hearing more about your podcast.

Dawn : [00:49:57] Awesome. 

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