If Susie Youssef didn’t regularly take herself for a walk, usually from Bondi to Bronte, or by the bay in Drummoyne, she would be “about seven shades crazier”. Walking, says the Sydney comedian and actress, “keeps me sane”. That’s why she agreed, despite a delicate professional reservation, to join Alone Australia winner Gina Chick in becoming one of two extra presenters on the previously titled Great Australian Walks with Julia Zemiro , now Great Australian Walks .
Comedian Susie Youssef hits the road as part of the revamped Great Australian Walks. Zemiro has relinquished naming rights but introduces each self-contained episode and begins the season with a cape-to-cape trek in WA’s Margaret River region. Youssef initially wasn’t sure she was the right person to join the series.
“It was because of my deep love and admiration for Julia Zemiro,” Youssef explains. “Julia has this incredibly fast brain and this beautiful energy. I thought, having seen the first season, she’s just perfect.
It was a show built around her. But I was also thrilled because SBS was paying me to buy new running shoes and adventure around.” Youssef won’t speculate on why SBS expanded the presenting team.
Youssef (left) with Great Australian Walks co-presenters Julia Zemiro and Gina Chick. “I don’t know the official reason,” she says. “I can’t think of someone more wonderful than Gina Chick to do this, given that she comes to walking with a really different perspective.
Maybe it was a lucky clerical error that I got involved. I think that, probably, Julia is a very in-demand, busy human.” The only time the three appear on the screen together is in the promo.
Zemiro also visits Uluru and Rottnest Island. Chick walks near her childhood home on Mount Kosciuszko and ventures to Tasmania’s Bruny Island, as well as Newcastle. Although Youssef put in a preference for NSW and Tasmania, where she has been working in theatre and Deadloch , respectively, she was assigned Paul Kelly’s “one sweet promenade” from Melbourne’s St Kilda to Brighton, the Riesling Trail in SA’s Clare Valley, and a bush bash in SA’s Wilpena Pound.
Her journey begins in the Victorian town of Beechworth, a name she knew only from looking at the jars of Beechworth Honey in her family’s pantry. “Beechworth was a dream,” she says. “I’ll never forget how honey-coloured the whole place was.
It was like a movie set. It was so beautiful, this preserved gold rush town. It was a joy at every turn, and the stories we found there – we really stuck gold on that one, pardon the pun .
.. One of the best parts of this show is discovering places and meeting people.
” In St Kilda, she sits down with musician Kutcha Edwards and comedian Rachel Berger, while in Brighton, she hooks up with comedian and birdwatcher Geraldine Hickey . In Beechworth, Youssef climbs a mountain with Waywurru descendant Megan Carter. “Megan discovered her story later in life, and she’s made it her life’s work to make sure that those stories are taught,” says Youssef.
“It’s interesting for me, as a comedian in those situations, where you drop all your filters and realise how lucky you are to have these stories around you. I didn’t feel the need to lighten it. We just held space for the story.
” Hoping for a third season, Youssef returns to her regular Sydney route, pounding the sand alone or with company. “I love catching up with friends who you don’t have to be sitting down and looking at to have a conversation with,” she says. “And the bay is about the right amount of Ks for me to get out of my own head and be OK to walk through the world.
Loading “When you are an overthinker and a stress-head, movement takes the thoughts out of your head and sifts through them. There’ll be mornings where I wake up and feel like I have to solve every problem in the world. And once I’ve gone for a walk, I’m like, ‘I’ll just do them one at a time’.
It reminds me of the tools that I have and the best way forward for me.” Great Australian Walks returns on Thursday, August 22, at 7.30pm on SBS.
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License this article Australian TV For subscribers What to watch What's on TV Film & TV production Bridget McManus is a television writer and critic for Green Guide. She was deputy editor of Green Guide from 2006 to 2010 and now also writes features and interviews for Life & Style in The Saturday Age and M magazine in The Sunday Age. Most Viewed in Culture Loading.
