Keeping Canberran women safe in the bush

Posted on 11 September, 2019

Have you ever been out enjoying a bushwalk and suddenly realised you didn’t bring enough water?

Kelli Jackson’s interest in women’s safety in the outdoors was sparked by a moment just like that.

“It put me into a bit of a panic and made me realise how vulnerable and under-prepared I was,” she says.

Kelli was able to get home safely, but she couldn’t get the experience off her mind. So she decided to do something about it.

“That moment kicked off a significant personal interest in survival skills, in wanting to know more about and understand lost person behaviour and lost-person psychology, and in wanting to help other women with the skills, knowledge and experience to stay safe in the bush.”

Kelli is no stranger to the outdoors herself, growing up going camping with her family and participating in Brownies, Girl Guides and Outward Bound. She has also spent time deployed in Afghanistan and Kuwait on military operations and completed several survival courses.

Kelli Jackson.

Her taste for adventure even led her to become the first person in the world to unicycle North Korea last year. To share her knowledge with other women, Kelli created Bushsafe, a small business that provides education and outdoor skills and experiences.

“Bushsafe teaches three areas of survival skills: prevention, survival and maximising rescue,” Kelli explains. “I can teach primitive skills too, like how to start a fire with a bow-drill, but it’s a skill you’ll most likely not be able to use when you’re in the middle of an amygdala hijack (a fancy term for panic) upon realising you are lost.”

“So I teach more pragmatic, hands-on practical lessons including how to gain control of that panic, some basic skills and confidence in staying alive, and how to maximise your rescue chances.”

Kelli believes bushwalking can be a great way to get back into fitness and enjoy our beautiful natural environment in the ACT. However, many women face internal and external barriers to participation, whether because of the financial cost, social concerns or a lack of experience.

“If you didn’t participate in the Duke of Edinburgh scheme or join your university bushwalking club or grow up with a family that went camping, there’s no ‘adult women scouts’ experience.

“Whilst there are fantastic local bushwalking clubs around, many women don’t want to participate at such a formal level or they feel like they’ll slow the group down or don’t have enough experience. Women want to feel confident, safe and knowledgeable on social or recreational walks too.”

Bushsafe recently received an ACT Government Participation Innovation Fund grant to enable an expansion of their projects and get more women feeling safe and confident outdoors. The grant will be used to fund hiking and camping gear, navigation equipment and courses and introductory survival skills courses.

It will also allow Kelli to offer Inner Adventure Experiences, which will help women address some of the confidence issues that might be holding them back from participating in the outdoors, and ‘From Couch to Mt Tennant’, an outdoor fitness program that will provide fitness training sessions alongside a gradually increasing series of walks.

“Being awarded the Participation Innovation Fund means I can provide lots of opportunities for women who want to enjoy the outdoors more, but don’t know where or how to start.

“Giving women outdoor skills also potentially reduces the future burden on our emergency services, and the more active we are, the lesser the burden on our health systems and the better our quality of life.”

Bushsafe has forged links with other community groups to reach even more Canberrans, including Nature Play Canberra, body-positive outdoors group Escape Your Comfort Zone, and Meet and Move, an outdoors group for new mums and kids.

Kelli also runs a volunteer-led community women’s outdoor adventure group called Women’s Adventure ACT, which has over 1,300 members.

In 2018, Women’s Adventure ACT ran over 65 activities that over 560 local women participated in, including abseiling, caving, a citizen’s science fungi project, fencing, archery, kayaking in Jervis Bay, an indigenous bushfoods and edible weeds education course, a beginner’s overnight hike and camp, a camping gear course, climbing Mt Kosciuszko, and bushwalking on many trails in the Canberra region.

If you’re interested in getting involved, you can find out more about Bushsafe and the courses available on the website.