Proper True Yarn

Buster Kirby is back on the pod, and the last time he and Knuckles recorded together was in New Zealand, followed by an after party at Rock 2000 in Auckland where a mate stripped off to reveal a tribal tramp stamp on an angle. These days Buster is 45, living in the hills behind Byron near Nimbin, and has made a pact to go 10 years hard on the comedy before building a big fence around the farm at Tyalgum and raising cows. He also married his third cousin. They checked with Aunty Ollie, the family oracle, who reckoned they were related "...

Part 4 with Jack from Bellmere Butcher, wrapping up the series. First things first: the shop is at 65 Bellmere Road in the heart of Bellmere, near Caboolture. It's a back to front shopping centre, so Jack is working on a giant sausage sign for the street so nobody drives past.

Jack's grown up around food, his parents ran Italian restaurants in town, and after 10 years inside the same four walls of less than 50 square metres, the new shop is how he keeps himself and his team interested. New creations are on hold until they've got the room to...

Part 3 with Jack from Bellmere Butcher. Knuckles asks why the self proclaimed sausage king has never entered the sausage awards. Jack actually signed up this year, membership and all, then the reminder email landed and he saw what it takes: every sausage in every category, every ingredient listed, made, cryovaced and shipped by a deadline. With 12 staff jammed into a shop under 50 square metres, it's a job for next year. His figures don't lie and he's got nothing to prove. Knuckles just wants to know who cooks them, because one bad cook could wreck the best snag in the...

Part 2 with Jack from Bellmere Butcher, and this one's all snags. Jack had Facebook for Marketplace and nothing else until Blake, a meat marketing bloke, talked him into a month of videos. The first few were average. Then they filmed a sausage he'd dreamt up during COVID called the Counter Lunch: rump steak, hot chips and pepper gravy. Over 3 million views on the first proper video.

The comments went both ways and Jack couldn't care less, but Megan lost three days of sleep trying to reply to every one. Knuckles reckons the keyboard warriors are doing him...

Part 1 with Jack from Bellmere Butcher. Two weeks out from opening his new shop, Jack had his tradie mates (mostly cousins and family) knocking off with beers at 2.30 on a Friday, trying to come up with a yarn he could actually tell on this show. Then a little Kia pulls up in the middle of six blokes and a lady in her 80s gets out, looks at the sign and goes, "not the Bellmere Butcher", she was hoping for a Domino's.

The boys couldn't help themselves. His cousin the sparky asks if she shops there. Never, she's...

Part five with Luke Geiger is the Mount Isa Rodeo yarn, and it might be the funniest five minutes of the series. The setup: Luke and the boys land one of their biggest gigs ever, playing the Isa Rodeo alongside O'Shea, the Screaming Jets and Aussie rock royalty The Angels. After the Friday crowd thinned out on the Jets, the promoters flipped the Saturday order, so The Angels went on first and Luke's crew got the closing slot, sharing a green room with the Brewsters and Dave Gleeson, who spent the arvo singing cowboy songs with them out the...

Part four with Luke Geiger is the touring yarns, starting with a crash course in hospitality riders and the piss-takes buried in them: six mandarins, three peeled and three unpeeled, green M&Ms picked out of the bowl, and one bloke whose rider ends with a framed picture of Trace Adkins. Luke's had his own rider rinsed by another artist who shall remain nameless but absolutely knows who he is, and there's the all-time Mackay classic from his pub days with Big Sexy: play a packed Friday night at Malloy's, tell the barman to tab the drinks up, then...

Part three with Luke Geiger, and it's the big exclusive: Australia's wildest cowboy party is going after a Guinness World Record. Luke's whole thing is taking requests, not breaks. He plays six and seven hour sets without stopping, and Knuckles has watched him do eight and a half hours straight at the Gympie Muster's Lights on the Hill bar with three trips to the dunny, after already playing all day at It's a Bloke Thing in Toowoomba and getting choppered between the two with James Johnston. The only reason the man stops is a flat battery.

So...

Part two with Luke Geiger opens with maybe the most innocent mistake ever made by a country footballer. Fresh out of Chinchilla and playing footy in Sydney, 18 year old Luke discovers the whole squad shaves, and the trainers won't rub you down before a game if you're hairy. After a leg waxing attempt back in Toowoomba ended at one leg, two girls and a lot of swearing, he spots a sign under his unit block: painless Brazilian waxing. He chews on it for a couple of days, wondering what's so special about this wax from Brazil, then walks in...

New guest series with one of the best blokes Knuckles knows, Queensland cowboy country singer Luke Geiger, and the pair front up fresh from trying to drink rum for Australia at the 16th It's a Bloke Thing prostate cancer luncheon, hosted by their good mate Jack Wagner at Wellcamp Airport. The lunch raised $39,000, and the cause is a beauty: a testing truck partnered with Heart of Australia that's already checked 541 blokes in rural Queensland, with 12 per cent sent for follow ups. That's near 60 blokes who'd never have been checked. If you see it out west, walk in.

...

The final part with John Rayner is one big love letter to the bush, and it starts in Fred Brophy's boxing tent at the Birdsville races. After days patrolling the Simpson Desert, Johnny fronted up to the tent chasing the family legacy, his grandfather was a tent fighter back in the day. Jessie got caught in the crush at the front, and when the RFDS bloke helping Fred asked if there was anything he could do, she dobbed Johnny straight in: he really wants to fight. Hand up, on the board, matched with the tent champion Afro Savage, who...

Part four with John Rayner is the ranger years, and it opens with how he got there: taking the pay cut from mining money to a National Parks traineeship, moving down to Barmah on the Murray with his now fiancee Jessie after four months together, and walking into an Echuca bottle shop to tell the manager he'd work that night for free and be given a job by close. Advice to the young fellas, that's how it's done. The bottle shop yarns from houseboat party season are worth the listen on their own.

Then it's into the...

Part three with John Rayner opens with the maddest scheme of the series. The same cousin from part two, now unlicensed and living back at mum and dad's, loses the plot when his mum vacuums a blonde wig out from under his bed and wants to wear it to a 70s party. His explanation: that's me licence. When he drives with the wig on, the cops think he's a woman. Her reply, God bless her, is the best line of the episode: mate, you've got a beard.

From there it's back to the Cudgegong River, hundred pound...

Part two with John Rayner is about the cousin he idolised, the bloke he describes as Stifler: smooth as anything, great with women, would pump you up one on one and shit on you the second there was an audience. The same bloke who once woke a sleeping Johnny up by putting a steak knife in his leg.

The yarns get wilder from there. The tin dropped in the car park on the way to the Mudgee food festival, a carton of rum throwdowns, and the night of hazing that ended with 15 year old Johnny passed...

Fresh out of the Proper True Yarn fight camp, John Rayner sits down with Knuckles ahead of the seven man royale at Podcast Royale 3.0, and he's not there to make friends. No gym, no weight set, no boxing gloves. Johnny's training farm strong, throwing 44 gallon drums and tyres around and belting the bag in riggers, and reckons the city pricks on the card are in for a rude shock. There's respect for the legend Benny, but as Johnny says, no more sympathy votes. Whoever fights the best gets the win.

Then the yarns start. Growing up in...

The final chapter with Michael Crossland, and it opens with the scan that changed everything. Three years ago, busy again and skipping his checkups, Michael lay on a table while a trainee sonographer casually counted out loud: there's one there, another one, two more down there. He hadn't been told about any of them. Six more tumours in his throat, on top of the one from 2016, and a doctor once again telling him his tomorrows weren't guaranteed.

What he did next is the hardest part of this episode. He didn't tell his mum. He didn't tell his...

The full circle moments in this one are hard to believe. Ten days before the birth, Michael had reluctantly done a fundraiser for the Miracle Babies Foundation, a charity he’d never heard of. When he collapsed on the floor of level three, the woman who picked him up was the foundation’s CEO, and she told him everything was going to be okay. Then the man who spent four years of his childhood at Ronald McDonald House found himself living there again 30 years later with his own sick little boy. When sepsis hit and doct...

Part four with Michael Crossland starts with the promise kept. Years after losing his mum’s money in the GFC, he bought her a beautiful little home and put a pink ribbon on the door, told her he’d rented it for 12 months, then told her the truth: it was hers. No, he wasn’t rich. The bank lent him the money and he pays the mortgage every week.

Four weeks before he finally got his scans done, a surgeon speaking at the same health forum pulled him aside and said something didn’t look right about hi...

Then came the part he calls one of the hardest of his story. When his parents separated, Michael invested his mum’s share of the settlement in a high risk portfolio to try and buy her a home. Six weeks later the global financial crisis hit and he lost everything she had, the money of the one person who’d sacrificed her whole life for his. What followed was rock bottom at a caravan park, bacterial meningitis, fluid on the brain and Bell’s palsy, learning to walk and talk again, and the darkest stretch of his...

Part two with Michael Crossland picks up where the trial drug left off. The doctors said he'd never go to school, never play sport, and if he reached his teenage years it'd be a miracle. His mum told him everything was going to be okay and sent him to school anyway.

School turned out harder than hospital. No hair, no eyelashes, bandages over the burns, a nebuliser at every recess, and not a single day he didn't cop it from the other kids. Then, laid up after his first heart attack at just 12 years old, a get...

This week Knuckles sits down with Michael Crossland, one of Australia’s most in demand inspirational speakers, who made the trip up from Coffs Harbour to share the parts of his story he never tells on stage. Fair warning, Knuckles was in tears two minutes in, and this is only part one.

Diagnosed at 11 months old with stage four neuroblastoma and sent home with a 96 per cent death rate, Michael’s life was shaped by his mum’s decision to see it as 4 per cent full instead of 96 per cent empty. Chemo started on his first birthd...

The tables get turned this week as Knuckles puts Zak Palmas, the man behind the cam, in front of it for some proper true yarns from growing up on a cane farm outside Ingham, North Queensland.

First up, the story of two 16 year old mates who couldn’t find a car to get from a bush doof into town, so they took a lawnmower instead. Twenty minutes of road, a pair of L plates, and a phone call to the cops later, both of them were done for drink driving and ended up on the news.

A 22 seater fixed wing, four hours, no toilet, and you can't stand up in it. That was the ride home every swing.

So the boys would hit the bottle-o before the hangar, sink tins waiting for the plane, keep going once they were on it, and bring an empty Gatorade bottle for the obvious reason. One bloke had about six beers after a ten hour shift, filled his bottle, and kept going. The plane sits on a slight angle. Everyone's in boots so nobody notices. The admin lady up the front had her shoes off.

...

Zak spent years underground before he got into coal, and the mine he won't name was the most eye opening job of his life.

There was a bloke dealing gear out of a lunchbox in the workshop. There was a group of them at it, and they never got caught, because between them they had fake dicks and bottles of clean piss ready to go. Right up until the day the site tested everyone in the morning, brought them all back up to the surface mid shift, and tested them again.

There's a fitter knocking...

Drake has cycled more money through a betting account in one month than most towns are worth, and he still can't pick a winner.

Zak's got Google out and we're going through the whole lot. A 37% strike rate. $770k on Canada. $1.5 million on Argentina to beat Spain, and Spain get up 1-0 in extra time. A million dollars on Argentina to beat France in 2022. Argentina win, and he still loses on a technicality. And then the one that started the whole curse conversation: a million on Conor McGregor against Max Holloway at UFC 329, and Conor's leg goes...

The last two fights on the card, and the main event is a bloke who fights for a living against a bloke who eats for a living.

🎟️ TICKETS → alphaevents.com.au, hit the Fight Night button.

Fight 12: Zayden Bryant (Dead Arse) vs BJ Wallace (Into The Green). Not heavyweights. Super heavyweights. Zayden got the call and went straight into gorilla mode, heavy bench, heavy squats, heavy deadies — and had to be told he's boxing, not entering a strongman. He's got Bryce in his corner and half of Rocky behind him. BJ's the lawn care king, a genuine...

Three fights this episode, and one of them we genuinely cannot call.

Fight 9: Tylen Wallace vs Josh Moss. Reef versus beef. Josh is off Love Island Australia and the No Hard Feelings podcast, all his photos are at the ocean, and right now he's training somewhere between Japan and Barcelona. Tylen's in a paddock. Tylen took last year's fight on a four week call-up straight off the farm, copped a hiding to the neck and just kept walking forward. Both of us are backing the bloke with the mongrel.

Fight 10: Liam Moore vs Nathan "Curly"...

First up the tag team, The Better Bloke Project's Matt Rogers and Rob Sutherland against Now Thats Dramas' Tommy Allen and Brody Hetherington. Except the card might not stay that way. If Matt's out and Big Kyle steps in, everything flips. Kyle got fed to Latsy last year and got well and truly smoked, but twelve months training out of Undisputed Boxing is a long time. There's also a rumour going round about Matt and bare knuckle. Can't confirm, can't deny.

Then Fight 8, the Seven Man Blindfold, where the defending champ is Ben Pettingill: blind, undisputed, and...

We got the two Proper True Yarn boys sorted last episode. Now we need to know what we're up against.

So Knuckles got on the blower mid-shoot and rang every director on the card to find out who they've thrown into the Seven Man Blindfold : and why.

Buster's crew have gone with Welchie, a Cargill farmer who was told 75 to 95 kilos, turned up at 105, and is now sitting at 94. He's also carrying the world's biggest testicle, which four of us have signed. One side of it. And Joey, a four-foot-eleven butcher with a big head...

The fight card breakdown rolls on. Knuckles and Zak run through fights five and six on the Podcast Royale 3.0 card.

First up, the one everyone's talking about. Shauny 'The Whip' takes on Micah from the Alpha Blokes Podcast in the Ant-Weight Bout, and the boys break down what makes this one must-watch.

Then Rob Huston from the Hard Yards Podcast squares off against Justin Becker from Reuben's Ranch Podcast, and the boys get into who's got the edge and why.

🎟️ Tickets at alpha-events.com.au. Fight night is 26 September at the Gold Coast Conve...

The fight card breakdown rolls on. Knuckles and Zak run through fights three and four on the Podcast Royale 3.0 card.

First up, Tom 'Barbs' Barbary from The Reggies takes on Beetle from the Two Flogs Podcast. Two big units who'll bring the crowd, and the boys break down who's got the edge when they finally square off in the ring.

Then the one billed as the Sit-Down Showdown, Clancy Barden against Sam O'Connor. The boys get into the story behind this one and why it's shaping up as one of the most personal matchups on...

The fight card breakdown starts here. Over the next run of episodes Knuckles and Zak go fight by fight through Podcast Royale 3.0, two fights an episode, and it kicks off with a couple of rippers.

First up, Josh 'Bluey' Neilson from Daily Blue Weekly takes on Jared 'The Judge' Purcell from the Broken Fathers Podcast. Bluey went 1-0 at the first Podcast Royale and the boys have trained with him, so they're leaning his way, straight punches, grounded, solid unit. Then Knuckles drops the twist. Purcell's ex-army and looks an absolute weapon. Zak reckons if he walked...

Part 2 with Zak Palmas in the guest chair, and he's finally spilling the Japan yarns Knuckles has been making him save for the mic. The boys start with how they actually met, working side by side in the mines, ripping on people and talking about starting a podcast years before it happened. Zak reckons watching Knuckles network his way through life is what finally taught him it's not what you know, it's who you know. Then Japan. Seven trips, one stint living in Hakuba at 21 and thinking he was invincible. Working as a cleaner, skipping breakfast and lunch, snowboarding straight...

Knuckles and Zak get Cam Hay from Mustr Racing on the phone for a quick one ahead of Buckeye’s first race start at the Gold Coast this weekend.
Cam reckons the horse is flying. Two trials, two wins, and he still hasn’t been out of second gear. First trial he jumped, went to the front and stuck it in first the whole way. Second trial they went quicker, he had to absorb pressure, they clicked him up a gear and he flew away from them. There’s four more gears in there.
The bit that gives Cam th...

The tables turn. After years behind the camera and in the producer's chair, Zak Palmas finally sits down as the guest, and Knuckles gets the yarn out of him. Zak breaks down his Podcast Royale fight against Matty Brown from the inside. His wife was pregnant and stuck at home with morning sickness. His trainer bailed to chase a world title. One of Australia's best boxers was meant to be in his corner and never showed. So Zak sat out the back of the Gold Coast Convention Centre completely alone, sweating bullets, watching Matty and his crew laugh around the...

Part 9, the final one with Geordie Lillis from Creators of Awesome, and it's the guest questions round. Four days deep into podcasting and Geordie's cooked, but he still delivers. He doesn't want anyone's autograph because he walks away from every shoot with a video of that person instead, which he reckons is worth more. No idols either, just running his own race, and the novelty of rubbing shoulders with Chris Hemsworth and Max Verstappen wears off quicker than you'd think. His biggest fuck-up is a good one. Eighteen hour shoot on the back of fourteen straight days, back at the...

Part 8 with Geordie Lillis from Creators of Awesome, and it's all travel yarns. Geordie's held a camera in more countries than most people visit in a lifetime. Sitting on top of Table Mountain in Cape Town, which he points out is a fair way from Dalby. Nights out in Piss Alley in Shinjuku, where three streets are packed with about 150 tiny family-run bars that fit three patrons each and some won't even let tourists in. Then Malaysia. Filming a vehicle announcement with the princes of Johor, wrapped in the afternoon, and found a 24 hour go-kart track. There's a bar at...

Part 7 with Geordie Lillis from Creators of Awesome, and it takes a heavy turn.
Geordie starts light, growing up on a bit of land outside Dalby with his old man teaching at the local state school, and reckons Progress Street in Kwinalei has seen the least progress of any street in the country. The pub’s shut down too, so it’s Kaimkillenbun for a feed these days.
Then he tells the yarn about his high school principal, Stacey Train, who years later was one of the three people involved in the Wieambilla shootings. Geordie’s memory of her is...

Then Christie’s driving on the highway west of Dalby filming a truck video. Swerves to save a turtle. Reckons she saved it. The following semi-trailer disagrees. Geordie’s got the GoPro strapped to the truck wheel and gets the close-up. Just a pink mist.
Then Broome to Darwin. Beautiful bridge, gorgeous shot, “let’s do one more,” drone straight into the tallest tree in the outback. Then the backup drone with a stick sticky-taped to it also gets stuck in the same tree. Four and a half hours from anywhere, sun going down, throwing rocks. Finds an arboris...

From filming Red Bull stunts and chasing Malaysian princes around racetracks, to landing in Johannesburg and having $40k worth of camera gear stolen before a wild midnight Maccas run. Geordie Lillis is back with another proper true yarn, and this one gets loose quick. 🎙️🔥 #ProperTrueYarn #GeordieLillis #AustralianPodcast #RedBull #Motorsport #Filmmaking #ProperTrueYarnPodcast

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