June 8, 2026 · Episode 70
49 Min, 37 Sec 

Summary

Read the full transcript for Episode 70 of Pain In The Arts, where we explore the fascinating and chaotic history of armchair treasure hunts. In this episode, we trace how innocent creative riddles can spiral into real-world obsession. Dive into the details of Kit Williams’s beautifully illustrated Masquerade and the hidden gold hare, Byron Preiss’s The Secret, France’s Golden Owl, and the infamous Forrest Fenn bronze chest in the Rocky Mountains.

Alongside these legendary real-world quests, we look at the pure puzzle-solving joy of Melbourne illustrator Graham Base, the realities of local arts funding, and the personal quests of executing a Tarago campervan fit-out. Read or search the complete conversation below.

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Transcript

Lyndon: Welcome back to another fun, fact-filled episode of Pain In The Arts, where the pursuit of meaningful art meets the unpredictable demands of real life. And you’re listening to Lyndon.

Breallyn: And Breallyn. It’s interesting we’re filling it up with facts now.

Lyndon: I don’t know. Well, I figured you’re doing this episode so there’ll probably be some facts. I have a lot of facts, but they’re all very disputable. I don’t know. I just thought — it’s true, we are a creative arts podcast, and it just occurred to me, think 70 episodes in, that maybe I don’t have to start it the same way every time.

Breallyn: We have our spiel. What’s it called? Little tagline.

Lyndon: Thing. I have it. You don’t seem to say it.

Breallyn: I can’t remember it off the top of my head, so that’s why I give it to you.

Lyndon: It’s all right. I get it wrong sometimes. But we’re doing an evening recording.

And you — I don’t know whether you’ll be able to hear this, but our daughter is making some noise in the background, so it might bleed through.

Breallyn: Might be lucky to hear the twitterings of Birdie.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: True.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Runway Lamps and Noisy Neighbours

Lyndon: Have we talked about my lamps?

Breallyn: I don’t believe so.

Lyndon: Do you recall whether we’ve spoken about it? I’ve got a couple of lamps in here that are from an airport runway, and I’m gonna say World War II — that cannot be verified.

There you go.

Breallyn: One of the disputable facts of Pain In The Arts.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: They are very cool.

Lyndon: They are cool. They’re not cool — super hot to touch.

Breallyn: That is true.

Lyndon: And like —

Breallyn: Like they can’t actually be used.

Lyndon: They’re too hot, yeah, like dangerously hot. So I spent way too many hours trying to track down globes, LED globes that would fit.

‘Cause I figure the LEDs don’t give off any heat. I might be wrong on that. Maybe they still give off some heat, but I believe LED globes don’t, just by their very nature. And so if that’s true, they might be perfect to be put… Anyway, so some arrived. I got the swirly ones when I needed the clippy ones.

Breallyn: Oh. Oh, that was an error.

Lyndon: Or, for people that know light bulb fittings, I got E14s and I needed B15s.

Lucky mistake, man, was I surprised when I tried to force a round peg into a different round hole. Into a swirly hole. Oh, so depressing.

Not really depressing at all. But just, yeah, I thought, okay.

Breallyn: Deflating maybe.

Lyndon: Yeah, deflating. Bewildering, actually. So they’re not on. That mood lighting’s not happening. Yeah.

Breallyn: But it’s —

Lyndon: A shame. It would’ve been nice recording at night. I needed that mood with those on.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Could’ve landed a plane.

Breallyn: I was hoping for a subtle glow, not an airfield runway.

Lyndon: It’s funny how you get used to things. We don’t have planes going overhead here.

Breallyn: That’s true.

Lyndon: But where we used to live —

Breallyn: Our last place —

Lyndon: Was under a —

Breallyn: We hear it all the time.

Lyndon: Was under a fairly busy airport, but not Melbourne’s major international airport.

Breallyn: No. But still, like a local airfield. Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah. And Cessnas would fly over, and you get used to it. And I think we’ve spoken about this — how sometimes you could see the pilot.

Breallyn: Yeah, they were pretty low. Our first night in that house, oh, kept waking up because it was also near the train line, so if it wasn’t a plane it was a train waking us up.

That’s true. And we were like, “How are we gonna live here? This is ridiculous.” And then —

Lyndon: And —

Breallyn: After a little while, didn’t hear it.

Lyndon: The ill-tempered bin guy.

Breallyn: Oh, yeah. He was so good.

As well. We were one of 15 units. Was it 15?

Lyndon: Either —

Breallyn: Round about… 11. And 11.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: And so all the bins would be right outside our windows.

Lyndon: Yeah, ’cause we were at the front.

Breallyn: Yeah. We were at the front. It was just a little tiny yard, and then, yeah, a nature strip with all the bins. And the bin guy got so mad one day. He just had a massive tantrum and was throwing all the bins.

Lyndon: Throwing them with the big mechanical arm.

But yeah, I was around there a couple of weeks ago, and in my mind the planes and that weren’t that loud.

But while I was there, one went overhead, and I was like, “That’s actually very loud.”

For the time it was just flying overhead, it was by far, obviously, the loudest thing in the neighbourhood.

And I was like, “Okay, it actually was loud.” Yeah. And I had the Garudio, the garage studio.

Breallyn: Yes. That’s right.

Lyndon: And every time — that’s right. I remember having a singer in there, and I would just be praying a plane wouldn’t go over. Oh, yeah. And planes and trains, it did interrupt recording, and I’d have to just — I could hear the sound of a train coming or something, and then I’d just have to make some sort of excuses to, just gotta do this and this. All right, we can start recording again.

Breallyn: Oh.

Lyndon: It’s the things that you gotta do.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: So silly.

Breallyn: Oh, that would be a challenge if we were recording the podcast if we were still in that house.

Lyndon: Oh, yeah.

Breallyn: We’d be pausing all the time.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Assistance Dog Countdown and Family Stress

Breallyn: We’re on a pretty cool countdown this week.

We are mere days away from Birdie’s assistance dog coming to live with us.

Lyndon: Yeah, and we have learnt that as much as it’s her dog, we’re all gonna benefit from it more than we realized, perhaps.

Breallyn: Let’s hope so, because, yeah.

Lyndon: When you were a kid, you had a dog.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And I had, in my lifetime, one, two, three, four dogs.

And —

Breallyn: I actually had two.

Lyndon: You had two?

Rags and —

Breallyn: Midge. Oh, Rags.

Lyndon: Yeah. Rags and Midgey.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Or Midge.

Breallyn: Yeah, or Midget.

Lyndon: Midget, okay.

Breallyn: AKA Midge or Midgey.

Lyndon: Yeah. Did your auntie run over your dog?

Breallyn: No. Did your auntie run over your dog?

Lyndon: I don’t wanna say, but I do wanna just shout out to Auntie Barbara.

You can get reverse cameras for your car now, but whatever. You can —

Breallyn: That’s good.

Lyndon: That technology’s come in too late for Samba.

Breallyn: Oh, too sad.

Lyndon: Anyway, so yeah, I guess we always thought we’d have a dog with our kids, but it wasn’t to be. But now we get one and, yeah. So what was — do you remember the statistic about the effect of dogs on people with —

Breallyn: Sort of PTSD and —

Lyndon: Anxiety and —

Breallyn: So on. Yeah. I can’t remember the statistic, but I think we were reading something that was saying, for burnout and PTSD symptoms, talk therapy doesn’t have much noticeable effect.

It doesn’t really help.

Lyndon: Something I’ve been saying for years.

Breallyn: Not that it’s useless — it’s obviously good to talk things through — but to reduce the sort of physical symptoms and the cortisol and anxiety, it doesn’t really work. But yeah, the thing that has been shown to be most effective is spending time with an animal.

Lyndon: Yeah, that’s right.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Let’s do a list of animals we think wouldn’t help. I’m gonna start with the goldfish. Basically anything — it’s out of the water — that you can’t really —

Breallyn: I don’t know.

Lyndon: You take it out and you’ve got anxiety that it’s gonna die.

Breallyn: No, you see — the people connecting with octopuses. That’s pretty amazing.

Lyndon: Oh, that’s true.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: I’m too scared to watch those shows because I don’t wanna get too curious about whether we should get an octopus.

Breallyn: I can answer that one already.

Lyndon: Besides, I’ve still got that memory of being completely freaked out by that one we saw.

Breallyn: When we were snorkelling.

Lyndon: Was that the place we snorkelled and we saw that one — was that at a place called Lyndon Land? Was that there? Do you remember?

Breallyn: Oh, it was on that coast. I don’t know if it was —

Lyndon: Oh, actually, in that place. Yeah. I don’t think, yeah. It was on the — what was that reef called?

Breallyn: Ningaloo. The Ningaloo Reef.

Lyndon: Yeah, it was probably on the Ningaloo, wasn’t it?

Breallyn: Yeah. In WA. Absolutely beautiful —

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: Place. Incredible. Yeah.

Disability, Dogs, and Finding a New Normal

Lyndon: The reason we’re talking about PTSD and all that sort of stuff — is because when you’re a family with disability, you do have that, we called it a new normal, didn’t we? It’s like when you first have a baby and you’re trying to catch up on your sleep. Trying to get the baby into a routine where you can get your seven or eight hours a night that you’re used to.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: At some point you go, “Oh, that’s never happening.” Oh, yeah. “We’re never getting that back.” Yeah. “Not like that.” And there’s —

Breallyn: No weekends.

Lyndon: And like — and that becomes, yeah. And so there’s this whole adjustment, there’s a new normal, your body adjusts, whatever.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: I can remember being so tired, outrageously tired, in those first few weeks. But so when you’ve got a child with a disability, at some point you realise, oh, this is the new normal — living with this heightened, I don’t know, I’m just gonna call it anxiety, distress or whatever. Uncertainty. Hypervigilant.

Breallyn: It’s just like — yeah.

Yeah. You don’t know. Yeah, you’re like trying to battle a thousand things all at once. Yeah.

Lyndon: And the cat hasn’t worked out as a therapy animal.

Breallyn: I think she has. She’s done very well. She’s done most of the heavy lifting around here. Yeah. But yes, next week Lacey, the dog — yeah, the smart pup — is coming. So that’s gonna be very exciting.

Lyndon: I’ll tell you who’s the most excited in the house for it.

I’m looking at ’em.

Breallyn: I may have bought many things to prepare for this dog. Oh, that’s right.

Lyndon: We’ll have it by the time we do another episode.

Breallyn: I know. We’ve had to block off all of next week to train us in how to be handlers of —

Lyndon: Oh.

Breallyn: Yeah, assistance dogs. So —

Lyndon: We need our licence or something.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Let’s hope we do better with it than we did with our boat licences.

Breallyn: Yeah. Maybe we can pilot a dog. I don’t know. Yeah. We did okay on our licence tests, we just never —

Lyndon: We never actually got —

Breallyn: We didn’t launch a boat, we just never got there.

Lyndon: No, we didn’t get the official licence.

We did all the testing, passed, and all we had to do was take that to VicRoads or somewhere. Can’t be roads. Boats don’t go on roads. They do.

Breallyn: Yeah, and then —

Lyndon: And get the official bit of plastic.

Breallyn: Yeah, pay for it.

Lyndon: Yeah, we had to pay —

Breallyn: For that. That was a —

Lyndon: Yeah, that was like —

Breallyn: Stumbling block.

Lyndon: Yeah, and we —

Breallyn: Thought we had longer. “Oh, geez, this is gonna be expensive.”

Lyndon: Yeah. And our testing results only lasted for 12 months. You know what? That’s a rort.

Breallyn: Oh, yeah.

Lyndon: Oh, okay. Well, okay.

Breallyn: No.

Lyndon: Can you remember anything from the test? Could you confidently get in a boat tomorrow and know which side is port?

I — or starboard or —

Breallyn: Yeah, I would know those, but all those different flags — oh, yeah, that would trip me up. I wouldn’t remember —

Lyndon: Yeah, which —

Breallyn: Side — which side of the buoy to —

Lyndon: Pass on —

Breallyn: Go on, yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Masquerade and the Birth of Real-World Treasure Hunts

Lyndon: Hit us with some facts. This is our fact-filled show.

Breallyn: Is it? Okay.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: I do have sort of some facts, but —

Lyndon: Just —

Breallyn: I just thought, spit —

Lyndon: Spit ’em out.

Breallyn: That’s not quite how it works. I was remembering this cool book that has been in my house growing up since I was a kid, and I would look at it for hours and hours on end. So it got me on a little bit of an interesting episode topic that’s all about this particular genre of books, which is a genre where some authors and artists have created a piece of work that then gets the whole public involved.

Lyndon: Oh.

Yeah, hang on — choose your own adventure?

Breallyn: Kind of.

So the book that I grew up with is called Masquerade, and it’s by Kit Williams, and I’ve got it here, Lyndon — you’re allowed to look. Our listeners will have to imagine. But it’s beautifully illustrated. It’s one of those books that are illustrated with just such gorgeous detail.

Lyndon: It’s about —

Breallyn: Beautiful pictures. It’s —

Lyndon: Like A4 size, yeah. Hardcover.

Breallyn: Yeah. So there’s all these lovely —

Lyndon: You know what it reminds me of? Pictures. If you’ve seen the start of Shrek, and he’s reading through the fairy tale book —

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah. With Lord Farquaad, and that’s got that sort of pictures and that sort of typography in it.

Bit of gold gilding — is there some on some of the —

Breallyn: Pages. There isn’t, but it easily could have. Yeah. So at the start of the book, it says, “Within the pages of this book, there is a story told of love, adventures, fortunes lost, and a jewel of solid gold. To solve the hidden riddle, you must use your eyes and find the hare in every picture that may point you to the prize.”

It’s a book that’s basically about the moon falling in love with the sun, and she entrusts Jack Hare with a gift to give to the sun, and he has to get through all of the earth and the seas and everything to deliver it. But when he gets there, he’s lost it. And so there is an actual — if you can see on the back cover — an actual jewel that Kit Williams made.

So it’s a — where you’re going with this now — yeah, an actual solid gold hare, like as in a rabbit hare. Really intricate, filled with jewels. And he then chose a secret place and buried it, and all the clues are in the book as to where this treasure was buried.

So it’s like a real-world quest, and he did it because he got frustrated with people flicking through picture books, all that beautiful work.

And people wouldn’t spend much time, so he wanted to create something —

Lyndon: Oh, so Kit’s a guy?

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Oh. For some reason I thought Kit was a woman.

Breallyn: Oh, I think his full name is Chris.

Lyndon: Kitten.

Breallyn: It’s not Kitten.

Lyndon: You’ll find.

Breallyn: So yeah, he wanted to create a riddle and something where people would really have to study every detail of both the writing and the pictures. So yeah, he did this, and it took a long time. There were two million copies of this book sold.

Lyndon: What, and just one jewel?

Breallyn: One treasure. Yeah. One —

Lyndon: Treasure.

Breallyn: And it took — let me find —

Lyndon: The modern version of this is someone on social media saying, “If you can guess where I am, and you can be here in 30 minutes, you win an iPhone.”

Breallyn: Yeah. That’s, I guess so. That’s true, yeah. Tiny little clues —

Lyndon: Or I’ve hidden $20 — and then — yeah, on a park —

Breallyn: Bench, and some —

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And then people go on their little quests.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: It’s quite interesting.

Breallyn: Yeah. This one took about four years to solve, and I think there was a bit of controversy around when it was actually found, because the person that found it — he didn’t actually solve the thing, he just —

Lyndon: Stumbled upon it.

Breallyn: No. Oh, he’d worked with someone who kind of knew Kit Williams and remembered that he talked about this park in his childhood. Oh. So then he found it. But at the time, when he went to the park to find it, there were actually two physics teachers there who had solved it, and they’d dug it up, but they hadn’t realised it was in a box and it was discarded. And so then this person found it even though they’d actually dug it up.

Lyndon: They got that close?

Breallyn: Yeah, yep. And it was —

Lyndon: Gee, that doesn’t give you a lot of faith in the physics department.

Breallyn: Does it? Oh, no. But before that had happened, there were so many people on these quests trying to find it, and one park in particular — everyone thought it might be at this place, and it was just being so destroyed by people digging — oh, no — that Kit Williams himself actually had to pay for a sign to be erected saying —

Lyndon: “It’s not here.”

Breallyn: “The hare isn’t here.” Yeah.

Lyndon: Wow.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Pokémon Go — they’ve taken this next level, haven’t they?

Breallyn: Yeah. I suppose that’s the digital way of doing it.

Lyndon: People have —

Breallyn: Having —

Lyndon: Died apparently doing it. Yeah. Because they’re just so focused on walking from one side of a freeway to another to find a Pokémon that they get hit by a truck. So — facts.

Breallyn: Yeah. That’s a fact. It is a fact, yeah. Is it? People are holding their phone — if you don’t know Pokémon Go, you’re looking through your phone at the real landscape, but Pokémon —

Lyndon: Oh, it’s called augmented reality, isn’t it?

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Is it? Is that what it is?

Breallyn: Yeah. And these Pokémon are popping up on the screen, or you’re trying to find them, or there’s clues to how to get there. Yeah. So you’re walking around, but so focused on your phone that, yeah, you might —

Lyndon: Miss — it is funny if you ever happen to be out and about and you just see a group of people staring at their phone, and they’re all in a car park or something somewhere, and you go, “What are they doing?”

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Like in the height of its popularity, or when it first came out, you’d see that sometimes.

Breallyn: I thought that was happening up at our local homestead community centre one day. I was —

Lyndon: What, it was just drug deals?

Breallyn: No, I was — it was really early morning, and I was walking there with Birdie, of course.

Yeah. Why would you? It was misty and, like, why would anyone be out and about in the early morning? And I suddenly saw all these people starting to rush towards the building. I thought, “What’s going on here? What could possibly make people be running towards this location?

Is it ’cause there’s a rare Pokémon popped up on Pokémon Go?” And then I just realised that it’s a site where — it’s not a mosque, but it’s where the men meet for prayer at dawn. So it was all the men running to get there for prayers.

And I was like, “Oh, that’s it. It’s not a Pokémon.”

Lyndon: I’ve never seen that.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: For obvious —

Breallyn: Reasons. Yeah. You could go join. I couldn’t. Yeah.

The Secret: Twelve Treasures Buried Across North America

Breallyn: Another quest, a treasure hunt, was inspired by Masquerade.

And it was called The Secret, and it was by Byron Preiss. And he actually decided to go, “I don’t just want one treasure. I’m gonna make 12.”

So he buried 12 ceramic casks, and they contained a key each, that then could be redeemed for a precious gem. And he published a book called The Secret, which had all the paintings and the cryptic clues in sort of 12 verses. And so that was published in 1982.

So published in 1982 — guess how many of the 12 have been discovered?

Lyndon: What were they? Keys?

Breallyn: Yeah, like casks with keys inside.

Lyndon: Oh, where’s this guy from?

Breallyn: This was in America. So he buried them across different cities, 12 different cities across North America.

Including New York, Boston, Chicago.

Lyndon: Oh, I have to say none.

Breallyn: Three.

Lyndon: Ooh, okay.

Breallyn: Three have been found, and —

Lyndon: Everyone’s just given up by now, I reckon.

Breallyn: Not, I don’t know that they’ve given up. I think people are still hunting. Really? Yeah, the people are really into this stuff. If you’re into it, it’s like being into anything — there’s a whole community that really love it and get right into it. But what’s happened subsequently is that Preiss passed away in 2005, and he didn’t leave a master map. So there’s nine casks out there. Yeah, he just didn’t. I think his estate will still, if somebody finds one, honour it still.

So the jewels are still there for people to claim. But also what’s happened in the meantime is things get dug up, buildings get demolished, the landscape changes, and you know, some of these things are gonna be lost forever.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: Yeah, and so they might not all be found.

Hide and Seek Champions

Lyndon: Hey, when you were a kid, how committed were you to playing hide and seek? Like, how committed of a player were you?

Breallyn: Mostly pretty committed. Yeah.

Lyndon: Did you ever find yourself in a situation where your hiding was either that good, or people just got so tired of looking — or both — that you were still there when everyone else had moved on, and you’ve had to just pull yourself out from some scary hiding place?

Covered in spider webs and then make your way back and find that everyone’s already on to dessert?

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Did that ever happen to you?

Breallyn: Not quite. It sounds like it happened to you.

Lyndon: No, not at all. Definitely not more than once. Just —

Breallyn: When I was about nine or ten, we moved into a really big house, like double storey. I don’t know. It was this really cool architecturally designed place, but it had lots of hiding places. And so I was the queen of hide and seek when my friends came over and I said, “Do you wanna play?”

Oh, you had the home —

Lyndon: Ground advantage.

Breallyn: Absolutely, I did. So I knew all the spots. Oh, yeah. So I had half a dozen spots at least that I knew I could hide, and that they wouldn’t be able to find me.

So, for those six months or so that we actually lived there — that’s funny — I won all the hide and seek.

Lyndon: Wow.

Breallyn: And then we had to sell the house.

Lyndon: Did you know those big hedges that you see, those sort of tall, narrow hedges that often surround a property?

Sometimes —

Breallyn: Like conifer-y type —

Lyndon: Ones, yeah, they’re square. The square ones.

Breallyn: Oh, okay. Yeah. Pittosporum maybe.

Lyndon: I’m not sure. Quite dense.

And they can get as high as you want them to be, I think.

I’m not sure that was Pittosporum, but you know, if you can get your way to the top of those, you can lie on them.

Breallyn: Oh, wow. That would actually be a good hiding spot.

Lyndon: I know.

Breallyn: So that’s where you were when everyone else was having dessert.

Lyndon: Oh, no. I used to just go up there semi-regularly and just lie on the hedge, the top of the hedge. Yeah.

Breallyn: Pretty cool.

Lyndon: Yeah. I can’t remember why. But —

Breallyn: Get away from it all.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: That’d be great.

Fenn’s Treasure

Breallyn: Perhaps the most infamous of the treasure hunts is the Fenn Treasure.

Lyndon: Fenn?

Breallyn: Fenn. A man called Forrest Fenn.

Lyndon: F-E-N?

Breallyn: F-E double N.

Lyndon: Oh.

Breallyn: Designed a treasure. Great name, Forrest Fenn. What a name. That’s a —

Lyndon: It’s all right.

Breallyn: That’s a cool name. Now he — cool name, complicated character.

Lyndon: A person?

Breallyn: Yeah. So he was an art collector and art dealer, but some of the controversy around him comes from the fact that his business actually sold some fakes and things like that. Oh. Some counterfeit paintings, and also he had a very large collection of Native American artifacts, and the origin of those were obviously all stolen in the first place.

But he would continue to make a lot of money and not acknowledge or give back any of those artifacts. So —

Lyndon: So he sounds like a bit of a — insert derogatory term here.

Breallyn: Like I said, obviously he’s not the only art dealer selling artifacts and things like that.

But yeah, a complicated person, as I said. But he was diagnosed with a terminal cancer, which he actually ended up surviving. But when he was diagnosed in 1988 —

Lyndon: That sounds impossible.

Breallyn: Well —

Lyndon: If it’s terminal.

Breallyn: Yeah, but it’s not always a correct diagnosis. Okay. Yeah.

But he decided to pack a bronze chest with a whole lot of gold nuggets, rare coins, precious jewels — about a million dollars’ worth. And he hid it somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, and then he published a kind of autobiography-type thing with some different poems and short stories and stuff in it.

And there was a 24-line cryptic poem within this that gave all the clues.

Lyndon: Hang on, so he didn’t actually write a book? It’s not like these other ones.

Breallyn: It’s not quite the same as all these other ones.

Forrest Fenn Fallout

Breallyn: It was not as beautifully published and so on as these other ones.

Lyndon: Did he use a photocopier and some staples?

Breallyn: I don’t think it was quite that, but he did do some sort of writing and art and that sort of stuff. But this is obviously a bit more modern as well, but it triggered a sort of massive hunt for this chest of gold.

So over 350,000 people have gone searching for it, and there’s actually a documentary about it, but there have been some really troubling outcomes to this particular treasure hunt. At least five people have died in the wilderness searching for this treasure chest — which is really quite shocking.

And people have become so obsessed with it that they’ve given up their jobs, their relationships. It’s actually caused a lot of trouble for Yellowstone National Park as well, trying to keep people out of forbidden areas and —

Lyndon: You do need a quest.

This is the thing.

Breallyn: People love a quest. Yeah.

Lyndon: Yep.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: You need something to live for — or die —

Breallyn: For —

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: And I think, too, it becomes such a thing that people would get so obsessed with one line of the cryptic clue. And they would think that they’ve found it, like they’re gonna go, “Oh, there’s this, and it might mean this, and I’ve found this particular thing that correlates to this.”

It got me thinking about what people would do for a treasure as well. What I love about these quests is that it’s a creative idea, especially the ones where they’ve crafted a beautiful piece of jewellery.

Like, how gorgeous. Like Masquerade. There was also a French one — you like the effort. There was a beautiful one called On the Trail of the Golden Owl. I’m not gonna even try to butcher the French, but it was like a French armchair treasure hunt, and an author did like 10 text riddles paired with some gorgeous paintings by an illustrator.

They essentially made a golden owl, a golden jewel-encrusted owl, but then they made a bronze replica of it and buried the replica. And then it was a treasure hunt like that. But you could solve it from wherever you were. You’d just write in and say, “This is where I think it is.” And if you were right, you’d get to go and dig it up.

Lyndon: Dig up the replica.

Breallyn: Yeah. And then did you get the actual one? Yeah, then you would trade it in for the real one.

Yeah. So it’s a unique piece that’s been created. Same with Kit Williams’ Masquerade — a unique actual piece of something that’s worth something because it’s gold and jewels. Oh, yeah. But it’s been crafted and it’s part of this whole thing. And then the art that goes with it, it’s fun riddles.

A child could get involved and solve it, but also anyone of any age. There’s something sort of — I don’t know, innocent about it. It’s just a fun — like, how much do kids love riddles and rhymes and trying to solve something and trying to hunt for something? Kids love hide and seek. Kids love treasure games at parties and stuff like that.

So yeah, I love the innocence and the involvement — that if you buy a copy of this book, you can partake and solve this riddle and be part of this community that’s all trying to solve it, and who’s got a clue and all that.

So there’s something I really love about some of these ones. I think the Forrest Fenn one got ugly quite quickly, which was sad. Yeah.

Melbourne Street Treasures

Lyndon: I’m wondering whether Sizzletown’s Tony Martin has heard of any of these books and quests, because he famously — his quest is walking all the streets of Melbourne —

Breallyn: Ah.

Lyndon: With his partner.

Breallyn: Yes. I think, yeah.

Lyndon: He told me. So they are crossing off their list all the different streets, with the aim to have walked them all.

Breallyn: Wow.

Lyndon: I feel like if he knew about these quests, maybe —

Breallyn: There’s treasure to discover somewhere. Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah. What are you gonna find on a Melbourne street?

Breallyn: Not much.

Lyndon: Packets of ciggies.

Breallyn: What about the poo jogger? Yes. Was that what he was called?

Lyndon: Poo jog… There’s been more than one poo jogger. There was a scandal going around Melbourne not long ago.

One of my first jobs when I was about 14 was tidying up the yard of a 7-Eleven, and the 7-Eleven had about a couple of metres gap between the building and the back fence.

So it was on a corner. And anyway, there was always a lot of rubbish dumped behind the 7-Eleven, and it was my job to clean it up. And I would fill garbage bags — you know those big black garbage bags? I would fill them up.

And there were all kinds of —

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Disgusting things behind there.

Breallyn: Yuck.

Lyndon: So if Tony Martin wants to go to the 7-Eleven — oh — on Beach Street in Frankston —

Breallyn: He’ll find some anti —

Lyndon: Treasure. Just a bit of — yes, some anti-treasure. But —

Breallyn: Ew.

Lyndon: There were needles and —

Breallyn: Oh, gross.

Lyndon: All kinds of things behind there. Did —

Breallyn: Did they give you one of those —

Lyndon: There were prophylactics.

Breallyn: Ew.

Lyndon: That’s a big word. You won’t find that in the Bible.

Breallyn: Gross. So did they give you one of those claw things to pick rubbish up with?

Lyndon: They did not.

Breallyn: Did they give you some gloves?

Lyndon: Yeah, I think they did. Some heavy duty —

Breallyn: Like ones that —

Lyndon: I think they did. Yeah, because I remember a needle went through the glove.

Breallyn: Oh.

Lyndon: So I did have gloves.

Breallyn: Great.

Lyndon: They were rubber gloves. No, they weren’t.

Breallyn: Oh, man.

Lyndon: They were just those gardening gloves.

Breallyn: Oh, that’s so bad.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: I like how they gave that job to the 15-year-old.

Lyndon: 14. As soon as I turned… How old do you have to be to work inside, legally? It was probably 15.

Breallyn: Yeah, maybe it was.

Oh, yeah, maybe it was 14 and nine months or something.

Lyndon: Something like that.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: So over the Christmas period I went away, and then there was a guy at school that got a job at 7-Eleven while I was away, and he was a classmate of mine.

And I think this is how I met him. And I was like, hang on a minute, I’ve been there picking up syringes, putting my life in danger, doing this disgusting job, and then he just waltzes in while I’m not there and gets a job behind the counter, like on the till or whatever it was. And that was Jared Binks.

Breallyn: Oh. Yeah. Turns out being one of your best mates.

Lyndon: Yeah. Yep. And so we became friends after that.

So it was like year 10 or something. But, yeah.

Breallyn: Yeah, I’d be put out about that too. That would…

Lyndon: Yeah. So they’re the sort of treasures you can find on the Melbourne streets. That’s unfair to Melbourne, come on.

Breallyn: There’s gotta be better stuff than that.

Lyndon: We live in the Garden State. What do they call it now?

It was the Education State and the Garden State. What is it now?

Breallyn: I don’t know.

Lyndon: It’s not the Arts State.

Breallyn: No.

Arts Funding Reality Check

Breallyn: Not while they’re continuing to cut all our funding.

Lyndon: Just as an aside, heard a really good to-camera thing the other day from an arts guy. I’ve forgotten his name, but he was making the point that the model that we’ve always had — like if you wanna be an artist and pursue that here — the money that’s available to you is only through grants.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And so it’s this competition all the time. And you’ve gotta get really good at grant writing —

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And he was pointing out that’s actually all it has been, for however long.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: And we’ve all just accepted it and gone, “That’s just how it is.”

Breallyn: Yeah. We either starve or we —

Lyndon: And —

Breallyn: Get a different job, or we write our grant applications and compete for a small pool of funding. Yeah, you compete against all our friends and collaborators and everything, yeah.

Lyndon: It’s —

Breallyn: So — it is nuts.

Lyndon: Yeah, it is nuts.

Breallyn: Yeah. There’s gotta be better ways.

Lyndon: It wouldn’t be so nuts if you lived somewhere that, when you went out, there was nothing to do creatively. There was no arts. There were no arts precincts — so you’d go, “That makes sense.”

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: But when you live in a city that outwardly values it and says how much they value it and so on, you would just think that maybe —

Breallyn: That they’d put some money behind that value.

Lyndon: It wouldn’t —

Breallyn: Just — and it’s — you wouldn’t have to rely on — infuriating because — grants or — yeah. I mean —

Lyndon: It was an aside, sorry.

Breallyn: Too many — don’t wanna get you —

Lyndon: Riled up this time of night.

You won’t sleep.

Breallyn: True. But yeah, a lot of it is, yeah, come to Melbourne, look at our great theatre and our cool street art and how vibey this whole place is, and we’ve got thriving music scenes and all of this. And then not actually put any money behind any of that.

And once a local area becomes cool because all the artists are living there cheaply and creating stuff, then the prices go up so much the artists can no longer afford to live there. So they’re kind of kicked out all of a sudden. Yeah, or a music —

Lyndon: Venue that’s been somewhere for decades and is responsible for so many acts that we know and love.

That’s where they cut their teeth, and that’s where new bands are cutting their teeth, and then an Airbnb opens up over the road and puts in a noise complaint, and yeah. That’s it. And all of a sudden it’s — oh — so none of that means anything anymore. Yeah.

Breallyn: Yep.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Very disappointing.

Lyndon: They’re fighting that in New Zealand at the moment.

Breallyn: We should bring that as a facts-based story for next time. Yeah.

Lyndon: Wow, I can’t believe how many facts we’ve dropped this episode. Facts here, there, and everywhere. So many facts.

Graham Base and the Joy of the Quest

Breallyn: One last one I was gonna talk about today in this treasure quest is basically all of the wonderful work by Graham Base.

But particularly — he’s got another book there — The Eleventh Hour, which I actually don’t have. I thought we had a copy, but I’ve brought in Enigma, which is one of his. Now, Graham Base — Melbourne-based writer and illustrator — and I remember when Animalia came out when I was in primary school, which was — oh, is that the guy?

Yeah, yep. And for those who don’t know Graham Base’s work — as soon as you see it, you’ll know his work. He has the most exquisite drawings. And he’s — and Animalia was —

Lyndon: He’s not the illustrator, is he?

Breallyn: Yes.

Lyndon: Oh, he is?

Breallyn: Yeah, he’s the writer and illustrator.

Lyndon: Is that — is that one of the things that’s different about his books compared to Masquerade?

Or did —

Breallyn: So I believe — yes — yeah, Kit Williams wrote and illustrated this one. Oh.

Lyndon: Okay.

Breallyn: Yeah, yep. Well — and made the art piece. And —

Lyndon: Oh, okay.

Breallyn: Yeah. So Kit Williams is an extraordinary artist. He actually has gone on — after this book, I think, he mostly switched to his visual arts, but he’s created these really whimsical, huge clocks that hang in city squares and things like that.

Very intriguing things where a fish will blow a bubble, and you make a wish on it, and then it — what? Just, like, all these kinds of — ooh — yeah. Really —

Lyndon: It sounds like stuff that’s really quite enriching people’s lives, you know?

Breallyn: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. He got a little bit annoyed and —

Lyndon: And now he runs a motel in Wisconsin.

No?

Breallyn: No.

Lyndon: Okay.

Breallyn: He’s English.

Lyndon: Let’s scrub that. That’s not a fact.

Breallyn: No, that’s all right.

Lyndon: There’s planes. He could’ve flown over there.

Breallyn: So back to Graham Base, who just illustrates the most gorgeous, beautiful books, and yeah, lovely, huge pictures. Animalia had essentially a page or a spread for each letter of the alphabet. And there’d just be so many things starting with that letter.

Yeah. So kids would be — I remember at my primary school, we’d get it out at lunchtime, and then we’d all squeeze around the table, even upside down and sideways, looking at the page, ’cause you’d just be pointing out all the different things that you’d find in the different letters.

Gee. Yeah.

Lyndon: Sounds like such an idyllic childhood you had. Meanwhile, I was at —

Breallyn: A book and a table.

Lyndon: I was outside getting branded with wet tennis balls.

Breallyn: You should’ve gone and hung out with the library kids. What were you doing?

Lyndon: We didn’t have a library.

Breallyn: So one in particular, The Eleventh Hour, was a beautiful book written about an elephant’s 11th birthday, and the feast gets stolen.

And on every page there are clues as to who the thief is. And then the last two pages I think are sealed together, and the challenge is that you need to solve the riddles and find out who’s stolen the feast before you break the seal, and it is revealed.

So it’s kind of like you’ve got this personal quest, but there’s no treasure, there’s no monetary gain. It’s just the pleasure of solving the riddle and discovering the clues. And what a wonderful thing to do with your children as well, going through those clues and finding —

Lyndon: I suppose there’s —

Breallyn: A —

Lyndon: Life lesson in there.

Breallyn: Oh, I think so. I don’t think anyone’s died trying to solve The Eleventh Hour. Yeah. So that was his way, I suppose, of doing a similar thing — a quest-based picture book, but without the need to bury treasure. And yeah, I don’t know, it’s complicated.

I absolutely love the idea of going, “Let’s make something enticing and fun and just magical in this world,” that people can go and find it, someone’ll find the treasure. It’s like, yeah, find this thing, and it just sounds like such a great thing. But then obviously there have been some instances where it hasn’t worked out so well.

I don’t know.

Lyndon: What don’t you know?

Breallyn: I don’t know, yeah. I hate that things get complicated. I hate that lovely ideas turn into greedy, grasping —

Lyndon: Oh.

Breallyn: Things where people don’t know their own limits, or don’t know when to stop, or yeah.

Lyndon: Is there a metaphor in that?

Breallyn: No. Oh. I don’t really have a —

Lyndon: Metaphor. I thought you were heading to a metaphor out of all of this, or some sort of — I don’t know, what do you call it? Payoff? So your episode is a bit like Graham Base’s Eleventh Hour — where there’s no actual prize at the end. It’s just —

Breallyn: I think we can all draw our own conclusions.

I didn’t wanna come with — I didn’t want this to be a lecture, a sermon of a —

Lyndon: No, it’s a facts episode.

Breallyn: “Therefore, don’t do this, and do that.” It’s just more that there can be magic in the world. Ah. Just be careful.

Lyndon: But be careful.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: Be careful of the greedy human nature behind it.

‘Cause, yeah, not everyone joins in a spirit of collaboration and treasure hunting and enjoying it. Some people are just ruthless and can’t stop and —

Yeah, that competitive —

Lyndon: Spirit —

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Is — you never know where or who is going to be exercising that, I suppose.

So is this something that you’re thinking about creating? You’re gonna create a treasure or some sort of token. Token? No, what’s that called? Totem.

Breallyn: Totem?

Lyndon: A token or a totem even — for your novel. Are you considering doing something like this to sprinkle a little bit of magic in the world?

Breallyn: It’s not something that I’m considering doing for my novel, but now that you’ve said it, I’ve actually realised my characters do actually do a similar thing.

Lyndon: They’re on a quest.

Breallyn: They’re on a quest to get home, but once they —

Lyndon: Hey, yeah — actually, didn’t we talk about this?

Didn’t we talk about it on your podcast, In Search of Home?

They’re not looking for anything. They’re looking to get home.

Breallyn: They definitely look — I might be —

Lyndon: Thinking of something —

Breallyn: Else — look for places and there are touchpoints where they’ve gotta find — and yeah, but they do end up bearing a treasure of sorts.

Lyndon: It could —

Breallyn: Be a —

Lyndon: Board game.

Breallyn: Yeah. That would be fun.

Lyndon: Imagine if you created one of these things, like that guy where only three have been found.

If I did it…

Breallyn: It would be fun to do.

Lyndon: It’d be fun, but there’d also be that torment of just wanting to tell people.

You tell people where —

Breallyn: It is. You’d find it already, yeah. I think most of the authors, when they’ve actually created something, they go, “Oh, people will probably solve it within a couple of months.” And then years go by and they go, “Oh, I wish I hadn’t put so many red herrings in my riddles.”

Yeah.

The Pain in the Arts of It All

Lyndon: I know now why you’ve done this as a topic.

Breallyn: Why?

Lyndon: It’s Pain In The Arts. There was something that was just meant to be art for the sake of fun and creativity and whatever — and maybe community involvement.

It was a way of connecting people with the artist —

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Being interactive —

Breallyn: The artist’s work — with the work.

Lyndon: Yeah. And instead people have died. Yeah. They’ve desecrated parks. There’s even a whole lot of —

Breallyn: Lawsuits that went on that I didn’t even mention. There’s — people literally trying to sue Forrest Fenn and go, “Oh, you lied and I found — yeah, the spot, but you’ve moved it.” And things like that.

Lyndon: I believe that, yeah.

Breallyn: So crazy.

Lyndon: So human nature just —

Breallyn: That’s the pain — bubbles —

Lyndon: To the surface. Yeah.

Breallyn: The pain, yeah. That’s the pain in our beautiful art.

Lyndon: Okay.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Fair enough.

Breallyn: Maybe there is something in that — the pain in the arts. We can never quite escape the pain. But I love the ideas. I love the making of magic in the world and sharing it through that kind of medium of a book, essentially. Obviously I love a book, so I like that it’s something you can come back to again and again, find the clues and think about it and engage with it in that way.

Lyndon: I’m just imagining all the magicians that listen to this show just rolling their eyes. You talking about —

Breallyn: Reaping the magic.

Lyndon: All these authors putting magic into the world. They’re going, “Hello?”

Breallyn: Magicians, feel free to write in.

Lyndon: That’s good. And a good medium for an audio-only podcast.

Breallyn: Go and look up some of these lovely authors and illustrators, and the treasure will await you as you look at —

Lyndon: The pictures. So there’s more than just the ones you spoke about?

Breallyn: I’m sure there are many more.

Lyndon: Is it a whole genre?

Breallyn: Yeah. I think these are the famous ones because the jewels and the treasure are worth a lot of money, so that’s why they’d be very well known. But yeah, I’m sure there’s heaps.

Lyndon: What would I be willing to part with, bury somewhere, and then give people clues to go find it?

And how could I financially gain from it?

Breallyn: You sell many copies of your book.

Lyndon: I know I normally do hard-hitting episodes.

Breallyn: Full of facts.

Lyndon: Full of facts. F-O-F, that’s what they call me. Mr. Facts. But maybe I could do a light-hearted one like this and talk about hidden tracks on records.

Breallyn: That would be cool, actually.

Lyndon: Yeah. And spoiler alert, they’re not that hidden. They’re normally the last track after a little bit of silence. Remember when that would happen on a CD and you’re like, “Oh.”

Breallyn: Bonus track.

Lyndon: There’s another track. There’s a bonus track.

Breallyn: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was cool, and you feel like you’ve discovered it and no one else knows.

That’s a great feeling, the sense of discovery.

Lyndon: Yeah.

Breallyn: Go and grab a copy of a Graham Base book. You will not regret it. They’re so good.

Lyndon: Where do you find them? In the kids section of a —

Breallyn: Bookstore? Yeah, children’s section probably. But yeah, they’re so beautifully written that they’re actually probably a bit complicated for children sometimes.

Kids get a lot out of them, but an adult could read it and have absolute joy in figuring stuff out. And all of his books have just got layers of meaning —

Lyndon: In the text.

Breallyn: Yeah. Maybe every single one, but yeah.

Lyndon: Oh, and that’s a non-fact then.

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: I should do a tally of facts to non-facts in this episode. Great. Thanks for enlightening us on these quests that we’re all far too late to take part in now.

Breallyn: Maybe it’s a time in our collective histories where we need a nice new quest — something wholesome that no one’s gonna get too obsessed over, or lose their job, or sue someone, or go and do some dangerous hiking and end up not coming back. Just go do something fun that’s not gonna harm you.

Lyndon: My quest is trying to get back into the garage to finish the Tarago fit out.

Breallyn: Ugh.

Lyndon: Please.

Breallyn: That’s —

Lyndon: My little quest.

Breallyn: ‘Cause I can’t finish my quest of finishing my piece of furniture, ’cause I have no space to work on it, ’cause it’s all taken by your garage quest slash Tarago fit out.

Lyndon: I actually created that space for you now.

It’s in there just waiting.

Breallyn: And I need to paint the house, so it’s — yep, there’s quest after quest to do.

Lyndon: It’s just how you frame it. If you frame everything as a quest, it’s just fun, isn’t it?

Breallyn: Yeah, it’s fun.

Lyndon: It’s fun, exciting. And once I’ve got the Tarago fit out done, then I can actually go on a quest.

Breallyn: Then you can go on a quest.

Lyndon: And my quest will be to find a peaceful forest and —

Breallyn: Bury some treasure?

Lyndon: No.

Breallyn: No?

Lyndon: Just do nothing.

Breallyn: Yeah, okay. Fair enough.

Lyndon: Just do nothing and go, “I’m here now.” But I do know, and I told you this right from the start, it’s the actual making — I’m gonna get as much, if not more, joy from actually creating modules and that, that go in the van.

That’s actually —

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: At least half of the —

Breallyn: Yeah.

Lyndon: Half of the fun.

Breallyn: All right. Don’t linger over it too long.

Lyndon: I know. The car’s already up to 370,000 kilometres.

Breallyn: It would be such a shame if it died on your first quest.

Lyndon: It would be us. All right, we’ll see you next week.

Breallyn: Bye.

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