Jake Cassar Bushcraft& Survival

Jake Cassar teaches bushcraft and survival at Walkabout Park Wildlife Sanctuary in Calga, on the NSW Central Coast, an hour from Sydney and Newcastle. He has lived off the land for extended periods in remote parts of Australia, work that has made him a recurring survival and tracking presence on television and radio, including SBS's Prepping Australia. Courses run from single-day crash courses, priced from $129, through weekend intensives from $359, capped at 25 participants, covering the identification and safe harvesting of wild edible and medicinal plants alongside fundamental survival skills. Progress is tracked through his own JCB Patch System, structured like a martial-arts belt ladder: it starts at White Patch, covering fundamental bushcraft and survival, and climbs toward Black Patch, which requires participants to live off the land for fourteen days with no outside food or equipment. He also runs an online foraging course for people who can't reach the Central Coast in person. Courses share the 80-acre sanctuary with resident koalas, kangaroos, wallabies and wombats, but the instruction — plant by plant, skill by skill — is Jake's own, built from time spent surviving on wild country rather than a licensed or franchised curriculum.