No aching thighs - Julia Zemiro celebrates the joyous side of walking

Great Australian Walks (season 2) ★★★½
SBS, Thursday, 7.30pm

Some people have the knack of “being themselves” on TV (acknowledging everyone you see on TV is playing a part at least a little bit). There are presenters who can convince you that they are genuinely fascinated by the subject matter they’re dealing with, and there are those who can’t. Into the former category we might sort documentary titans like Michael Palin, Tony Robinson and Joanna Lumley. Into the latter we can place Gordon Ramsay, who when he’s not bellowing obscenities at terrified cooks can’t ever sound like he’s not reading a script. In Australia, there are plenty of Ramsays and precious few Palin-Robinson-Lumleys, but if there is one rare jewel whose sincerity never seems to waver, it’s Julia Zemiro.

Julia Zemiro in Great Australian Walks: a rare jewel.Credit: SBS

Great Australian Walks is Zemiro’s latest venture, and will come as a great relief to those who, lamenting the passing into history of Julia Zemiro’s Home Deliveries, were fearing we might never more see this national treasure – and that is surely not too grandiose a term for a performer Australia has so taken to its heart – wandering about talking to people. It sounds underwhelming put in those terms, but it’s simply what Zemiro excels at. She has many strings to her bow: her comedy chops are well established, and her performance in Fisk is proof of her talents when playing someone else. But the charm and warmth that reach through the screen and invite you along when Zemiro is just being Zemiro is a thing of wonder.

Walking is a reasonably relatable experience to hang a program’s hat on: even in the wondrous mechanised 21st century, most people still have to do the odd bit of walking, and Great Australian Walks seeks to shine a light on the joyous side of walking, as opposed to the side that involves aching thighs and blisters. You certainly never get a sense that our host’s muscles are screaming at her: as she strolls through various settings of stunning natural beauty she is persistently serene – maybe the absence of complaining or stopping to get a stone out of her shoe is the least believable part of the enterprise. But obviously, Great Australian Walks is not about walking: it’s about what you see and hear, the people you meet and the lessons you learn, while walking. Admittedly, there’s probably a lot more to see, hear, meet and learn when your walk has been co-ordinated ahead of time by an SBS production team but, to be fair, the show would be far less entertaining if it weren’t.

Susie Youssef (left) and Gina Chick (right) join Julia Zemiro (centre) in presenting Great Australian Walks’ second series.Credit: SBS

The idea is to illuminate the breadth and beauty of the country we live in by taking a ramble through some of its most interesting spots, and in this season Zemiro shares presenting duties with comedian Susie Youssef (Deadloch, The Project) and inaugural Alone Australia winner Gina Chick.

In episode one Zemiro is hiking along a stretch of the cape-to-cape track between Cape Naturaliste and Cape Leeuwin, in the Margaret River region of south-west Western Australia. There are pristine beaches, crystal waters, lush forests and vast rocky vistas that make for a wonderful bounty of long and wide shots as Zemiro walks through them, the loving cinematography providing evocative contrasts between the enormity of the land and the tininess of a single human making her way through it. However, moving in, the meat of the show lies in Zemiro’s meetings with the people living in the places she walks through. Around Margaret River she meets with musician John Butler, and in a brief encounter hears of his love for his adopted home and some rather surprising revelations about his past. That’s bread and butter for Julia, of course: she’s spent many years drawing stories out of people and still revels in it. Elsewhere, she meets with some Indigenous residents of the area to talk country, heritage and songlines.

In some ways Great Australian Walks is an educational series: there can sometimes be a feeling that Australia is a fairly homogeneous country, but the variety to be found – not just in landscape, but in lifestyle and culture – is one of the show’s little pleasures. There’s also a whistlestop tour of the history of each place. But perhaps more than anything, it’s a reminder of why Julia Zemiro has won so many hearts: no matter where she’s walking, you just want to walk with her.

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