Nowadays King Island is a windy and lush haven of tranquillity, away from the city crowds and filled with beautiful scenery, great food, a world class golf course and fantastic surf, only a short flight from Melbourne International airport but a world away from your...

Every kid nowadays has a camera. In fact, most humans carry around cameras in their jacket pockets, ready to flip one out at a moment’s notice to contribute to the grass roots, democratised, limitless documentation of the human experience on earth. It’s quite an...

We’ve had a lot of lucky run-ins with whales whilst filming projects on the East Coast recently. It’s the middle of whale season, so anytime you find yourself our at sea on a boat, kayak or surfboard, chances are you’ll spot whales nearby. Make sure to not approach...

We just happened to look up from our editing machines as the lightning struck full pelt across the horizon. Ominous black clouds rushed across the skyline as Melbourne’s corporate tower blocks were swallowed one by one by the encroaching bank of torrential rain. It...

That goat scene will never leave your memory. What had the goat done to deserve this anyway? But it could also have ended so beautifully – like that Tiger in Russia who decided to not eat his takeaway-goat-dinner but befriend it instead. But according to Spielberg,...

We’ve been researching a lot about skydivers recently. Last September, our project for Skydive Australia started to open up a whole new world to us, which ain’t a mean feet – we’ve been quite a few places already. We were both surprised and in awe by what you can do...

In 1797 Andre-Jacques Garnerin strapped a large bedsheet to a basket with a balloon to elevate it to the desired height, cut the cord and returned jolting to earth. He officially invented skydiving and even got a google doodle for it. In 1919 Lesie Irvin developed his...

We wonder if the humble whale shark knows he’s the pinnacle of nature-related facebook selfies. Humans get a kick out of going whale, dolphin and turtle spotting, but is it that one-sided? Who’s to say that dolphins don’t get together one morning and say, “hey, wanna...

You can build a tennis court just about anywhere on the planet. When you finished reading this, you could probably be swatting at fuzzy green balls within a 10-minute drive from where you’re sitting right now. But you can’t build a surf break just any old place. And...

Kindergarten, Primary School, pass the tests and get into a good Grammer School. Study hard. Don’t be too much of a teenager, this is the rest of your life you have in your own hands right now. Don’t mess it up. Go live abroad for a year with a previously unknown...

Don’t be a pussy. You might be really missing out, you know. As we’ve journeyed across the world and delved deep into the local culture, we’ve encountered all sorts of incredible foods we previously didn’t even know could be eaten at all. And when it comes to seafood,...

6:30 pm. The hostel kitchen is teaming with 18-34 year olds in city print singlets and elephant pants. You’ve scored the only clean-ish chopping board in the place and are waiting patiently for a free hob ring whilst an overenthusiastic Berliner called Timo tells his...

So you’ve just arrived on the other side of the earth. Your eyeballs are almost hanging out of your head, you’re that damn tired, but it’s only mid-afternoon, so you can’t go to sleep now. You’ve got to power through to a reasonable local bedtime so you get a decent,...

The first glimpse of our newest destination lay ahead of us, just a small sheet of plastic window between our noses and the vast expanse of South East Asia’s biggest country. We were hurtling through the skies at ‘one tea with milk and a coffee please’ speeds in our...

You probably don’t remember this now, but there once was a very first time that you ever laid eyes on a toaster.   You didn’t think to yourself: “Yawn. Vegemite. Maybe jam”. Nope. What you actually thought was: “Ohmygod! Ohmygod! A machine that you put bread into and...

Queensland. Some call it the Texas of Australia. Some call it ‘the place so humid, no one actually lives there’. Some call it the Sunshine State, and our Dragon, well, he calls it home. With a plethora of backpacker-catnip along the East Coast, you’d be forgiven for...

“I must get to the other side. This is my quest, he waits for me”… a bearded armadillo stuck to a Nevada highway by his squashes, tire-marked midsection tells a perplexed chameleon anti-hero Rango. “The Spirit of the West, amigo. Enlightenment! Without it, we are...

CCRAAAASHHHHHHHHH, SLAM, Bang bang bang bang… “Oh crap, I think I left one of the draws open”. We stop at the side of the road and the living, eating and sleeping space behind our drivers cabin is full of tshirts, notepads, plactic plates, muesli bars, knickers and an...

Hanging off one of the more distant of Indonesia’s haphazardly strewn eastern islands, you can find a little baby of a nation - Timor Leste - just 12 years old when Rat & Dragon rocked up. We’d covered 30,000km across the surface of the earth to get here from the...

Hellooooo. Helloooooooooooo....... *pat on the cheek* Hellooooo? Ah, hello! How are you feeling today? Good? Yes, of course you're feeling good, you're chilling on Bali! Whether you've just emerged from your washed-up-and-partied-out Kuta haze or have been finding and...

We cannot recommend overland travel enough. Read through our last 6 months of blog posts and you’ll see why. Overland travel on public transport is probably the closest you can get to experiencing a country in its authentic entirety, the good bits and the bad bits all...

Ever wanted a real filmmaking adventure?  Exotic tropical travel, danger, beauty and glory?  Well this could be your next project, but first, a word of warning: Rat & Dragon will not be responsible for injury, death or worse - kit damage - caused by attempting the...

Many hate him.  His armour is so hard and sharp and that he easily punctures and tears through flesh.  He lives in trees, and is so heavy that he can cause enormous damage – even death – if he lands on you from above.   So reviled that he is widely banned from...

I am just about to do something illegal. I’m about to cross an international border with what I am told is an invalid passport, which on top of that lacks one of the basic entry requirements of the country I’m about to cross into. Sounds like the beginning of one of...

You’ve just arrived in a brand new part of the world and it’s all incredibly exciting. You’ve remembered to get all your jabs, pack more than two pairs of underwear and your passport is somewhere safe (you can’t quite remember where that place is, but probably in that...

You’re gonna die.  Sorry to break it to you.   It’s nothing personal, just the nature of life.  We’re all gonna die someday, but don’t worry - you might just get another crack at it…   In Thailand, it’s believed that after death, you’ll be reincarnated. ...

The Egyptians did it. The Mayans did it. The Tibetans did it. Even the Koreans and German Housewives do it, en masse and with gusto – in the latter’s case with the resulting treasures to be stashed in some cellar shelf to collect dust, or to be given to secretly...

You are about to step into any 5 year old’s dream of dreams. Welcome to one of the craziest national activities on the planet. You’re about to get soaked to the bone and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.   Traditionally, Songkran (Thai New Year,...

We’re up for big film challenges, so jumped at the chance when we were asked to film an elephant ride in Buon Ma Thuot, Vietnam. “Never work with kids and animals” is advice you’ll hear from any seasoned industry professional, but being the Rat & Dragon maverick...

“I Kina spiser de hunde”, title of the 1999 Danish action comedy says it all. In China, they do really, actually, indeed eat dogs. But hold on a second, before you snub your nose in disgust, dear reader, hear us out.   Whilst other nations pride themselves on...

Monkeys are pretty cool at the best of times, whilst being admittedly somewhat scary and crazy mini humans, their comedic value and intriguing intelligence (what’s going on behind those beady little eyes?) makes for at least plenty of entertainment.   Some of us...

Like a medieval battle re-enacted every five minutes, at a green signal, thousands of people charge at each other from 5 opposing curbsides across 10 traffic lanes. Somewhere near the middle, the multiple battlefronts collide, like storm swells on a harbour wall. You...

Packing clothes for somewhere you’ve never been before is always a bit of a tricky endeavour, especially if you’re heading on a trip through varied climates. Before setting off, you may have no idea whether, once you’ve reached your destination, you’ll be too warm, to...

The Rat & Dragon crew has now clocked up around 500 hours travelling and filming both the Trans-Siberian and the Trans-Mongolian rail routes, so we’d like to think we’ve picked up some practical knowledge along the way. If you’re thinking of parking your butt on a...

Setting off onto our latest epic project, the Rat & Dragon team has over the last few weeks become something of an expert on cold weather kit. There is a wide array of options available from high street fashion stores to outdoors activities outfitters. If you’re...

“Everyday’s a school day” so they say.  Well we’d really like a day off occasionally, but when you’re constantly tasked with such a diversity of projects in far-flung destinations, you just can’t help but learn a new thing or two.  So when the Rat and Dragon film crew...

Rat & Dragon set out to capture 24 hours to squeeze into 90 seconds of distilled London spirit, but with all the hard work of location scouting, storyboarding, and of course performing and filming, we wondered: are we going to be able to make this look like we’re...

  We know the name’s a little quirky.  ‘Why Rat & Dragon?’ is about the second most asked question as we meet people on this London to Sydney adventure (shortly after ‘Are you crazy?’).   Could it be about the balance of forces between real versus...