Meet Travis & Brendan from Active Adventures, a YouTube Channel Inspiring Local Kids

Get inspired for family adventures with the Active Adventures YouTube channel. The brainchild of two local teachers from New Lambton South Public School, this YouTube channel aims to inspire young kids to try new activities, new sports and find new passions and hobbies.

Episodes include mountain bike riding, cupcake cooking, netball, parkour and local activities. The duo also showcase local playgrounds including Speers Point Park, Thomas H Halton Park at Croudace Bay and activities including Frisbee Golf at Jesmond Park and Mountain Bike Riding at Green Point.

As primary school teachers, Travis and Brendan share their passion for children’s education, fun and adventure in these light-hearted and family-friendly videos.

This is definitely one YouTube channel you can watch with your kids. They will enjoy seeing locations they’ve likely visited on a YouTube video. The videos are funny and engaging and will definitely get your kids excited about visiting new local spots and trying new things. Travis (in blue) and Brendan (in pink) make a formidable duo and you’ll laugh as you watch their adventures.

Newy with Kids wanted to learn more about the Active Adventures duo and bombarded Travis and Brendan with a bunch of questions which they kindly agreed to answer.

What is Active Adventures?

Trav: Active Adventures is a YouTube channel Brendan and I created to inspire kids to try new sports and develop new passions, interests and hobbies. The premise of each episode is that Brendan and I are either taught a sport by a ‘kid-superstar’ or engage in an activity that kids and families can recreate and engage in together.

Tell us about yourself?

Trav: Who the viewers see on the ‘Active Adventures’ YouTube channel, in Trav and Brendan, is very much who we are in life. We are both kids at heart. We love to laugh, have fun and, as primary school teachers at New Lambton South Public, care about making a difference in the lives of others.

Brendan: I’m very much a goofy, fun and loud person. I started off as a pre-school teacher for 6 years straight out of high school before making the move to primary school teaching. Since then I have worked mainly down the infants side of the school, with 2022 being my third year teaching Kindergarten.

Trav: Prior to this year, I have solely been a Year 4, 5 and 6 teacher, however, I have now made the move to infants and have a 2/3 class.

What kids age group are you targeting?

Trav: From the feedback I have received, it is a diverse age group the channel appeals to. My 3-year-old son and his day care friends and families have a new passion and hobby with each episode we release, and that same enjoyment and viewership extends from Brendan’s infants’ students to the year 6 students I have previously taught who eagerly watch each episode. Needless to say, the year 6 students have a different appreciation to my 3-year-old. In saying that, they all love Brendan (the pink one) and his antics. As to the question, I would say our main viewership is within the 3 to 10 age bracket.

How did you both meet?

Trav: It sounds like a cliché and the start of a deep and meaningful relationship, but we met at work (New Lambton South Public School), where we started simultaneously in 2016 as casual staff members.

Brendan: I remember first seeing Trav at work. It was hard not to notice Trav as he had such an extravagant beard, while I was struggling to grow any facial hair. I definitely had beard envy!

Why did you start Active Adventures?

Trav: The idea for Active Adventures came about during the original COVID lockdown of 2020. As a Year 6 teacher at the time, I noticed the online content for kids that promoted healthy lifestyles and physical activity was lacking. This is where the idea originated, as I wanted my students to stay active and healthy during lockdown. In sharing this thought and a potential YouTube channel with Brendan, I remember him saying he had always thought of doing something similar as well.

Through conversation and multiple brain-storm sessions, it gradually evolved from physical activity, to sports and to adventures. Melding our Kindergarten and Year 6 perspectives, the ideas came together. It then took a year for us to actually put our ideas in motion, and we filmed our original ‘camping’ episode two weeks before the 2021 lockdown.

Why do you think it’s important for kids to try new activities, new sports and find new passions and hobbies?

Trav: Through my own life’s experiences and teaching kids, I’ve found that sport, activities and hobbies create meaningful moments. It is through these meaningful moments where we truly grow and enjoy life: we make friends; we develop relationships, and we find new passions. It essentially creates moments for joy and happiness.

What’s been your 3 favourite episodes to film for Active Adventures?

Trav: It is honestly hard to pin-point a favourite episode as they are each unique and special in their own way. Working with the kids on the sports episodes always provides a lot of enjoyment, as they are kids we know well, however the moments that stand out to me are within the cooking or craft episodes we film. To keep the scenes and dialogue fluid and moving, I have to be aware of what Brendan is doing in my periphery vision, but I can’t allow myself to be ‘fully’ aware and glance across as I will undoubtedly laugh and break the scene.

Brendan: Personally, I enjoy the ones where I don’t need to jump into stagnant bodies of water or jump over inflatable pools on a miniature bike… Actually, any episode where I don’t need to clean up a mess after filming!

Trav: There definitely has been some ‘clean-up’ episodes for Brendan – the messiest, smelliest and most memorable of which was when he leaped into the murky depths of a Beresfield golf course water-hazard to retrieve his ‘favourite pink golf ball’.

What has been the most popular episode of Active Adventure?

Trav: In terms of YouTube views, our original episode, ‘Camping’, has the most views, however judging from feedback I have received it would potentially be the ‘Yard Work’ episode or when we visited ‘Speers Point Park’.

Brendan: From what I’ve heard the kids love the episodes where they are familiar with the setting, so the playground episodes have been a real hit.

How do you choose activities or places to feature on a video? Do you have a list of topics to tackle?

Trav: The sporting episodes write themselves, as we want to cover as many sports and provide as many opportunities for kids to spark an interest as possible. Therefore, if it is a sport, we will eagerly use it for an episode. In terms of the adventures, they are activities I know the kids at school enjoy, and therefore other kids would enjoy as well.

Other episodes, like the ‘Bike Jump Construction’ episode, came about from my researching a DIY project to build a chicken coop for the backyard. In scrolling through instructional videos, I saw a DIY bike ramp and thought… ‘that would be a great episode!’ In essence, you never know where an episode idea will come from, so the list of episodes I keep on my phone constantly grows.

While you and Brendan are on the video, who is behind the scenes filming? How long does it take to film and edit a video?

Trav: Our go-to is Brendan’s wife, Grace, however we have used an interchangeable rotation of friends and family members for filming. Out of our 28 episodes to date, we have had 7 different friends or family members dedicate their time to film, and we greatly appreciate it – especially for the Speers Point Park episode where we had Grace following us around the park and climbing up the giant slide at 5:30am in the morning.

Brendan: Luckily for me, Trav does all the editing of the videos (he’s a natural). We are extremely lucky to have a very supportive crew around that offer to help film episodes. It usually costs us a coffee and breakfast after filming though.

Trav: In terms of filming and editing, we try our best to film as many as we can during the school holidays, as each episode roughly takes about 2 hours. In regard to editing, depending on the episode and the number of scenes that are required, it can take between 3 to 6 hours. This is often done very late in the evening once my 3-year-old and 5-month-old are asleep.

What are some of the memorable moments from filming out in public?

Trav: When we filmed our Speers Point Park episode, we knew we had to arrive early due to the popularity of the park, so we arrived at 5:30am. Little did we know, the giant slide is actually locked overnight, so we filmed all of the scenes and had to wait for the maintenance staff to arrive to unlock the slide for us. When they arrived, we asked if they could unlock and their response was, “Sure, but we didn’t expect to find the Wiggles here so early in the morning.”

Brendan: I used to get really nervous about filming out in public because I’m often the one doing the gags, but now I enjoy people stopping to watch us filming, so seeing the facial expressions of people walking past watching me be a goofball is a real highlight.

Trav: I also recall filming the ‘Mountain Biking’ episode and a family walked past offering us curious looks (this is understandable as it’s not every day you see a 6’3 man in a pink polo shirt and sweatbands riding a child’s bike with training wheels). What added even more amusement to the situation was that the Mum enquired if we were filming a ‘gender reveal video’.

What is your best advice for parents to encourage them to be active with their kids?

Trav: As a parent, the most important thing in my world is my boy (and now my newborn daughter) and setting him up for a healthy, happy, active life. I want him to have the confidence to try new adventures, experience new opportunities and have an open-mind to chase his interests and passions. By instilling this in him as a young child, I am hoping that it becomes habit for him to ‘give things a go’. I want him to know that you don’t have to be the best to do something, all you have to do is have fun. I have this same approach as a primary school teacher. I just want to model to kids that you don’t have to be scared or anxious about trying something new. You can just do it and enjoy the experience for what it is.

Brendan: I think just being open minded and willing to have a go at anything. With my class at school I always get up and give everything a go because I want to model to them that it’s not about being the best at something but giving something your best.

What is your advice for kids to get them to try new things?

Trav: If you see something you would like to try, find a friend or family member to join you and simply, have a go. Growing up, I was always hesitant to try new activities for fear of failure, but I later learned that is no way to live, so I model the ‘have-a-go’ attitude, so others have the freedom to explore new activities that I kept from myself.

Brendan: Trav has hit the nail on the head! Don’t be afraid to try new things.

How often do you release episodes of Active Adventures?

Trav: During Term 4 of 2021, we were releasing an episode every week, however the time-constraints to film, edit and also negotiate the workloads of teaching and our family lives made it unsustainable to keep such a pace. In a perfect world, we would love to release an episode every week, however we have found a comfortable balance where new episodes hit our YouTube channel every fortnight during the school term (Saturday mornings at 7am of weeks 1,3,5,7,9). This gives us time to film as much as we can during the holidays and then the occasional episode during the school term.

What’s next for Active Adventures? Do you plan to branch out from a YouTube channel into something else?

Trav: Between being a dedicated primary school teacher who loves his job and making a difference in kids’ lives and being a father whose greatest joy in life is being a parent and wanting to spend as much time with my family as possible, finding the time to branch out ‘beyond’ what we are doing offers a time-challenge. Active Adventures is my passion and joy, so anything that further allows us to be ‘Trav’ and ‘Brendan’ and make a difference in the lives of kids is something I will always embrace.

Brendan: Teaching and filming take up such a large chunk of my life that I haven’t even thought about branching out yet. I wouldn’t want to not be able to give something my all, so for me, I’m content teaching kindergarten and filming Active Adventures.

What has been your favourite thing about Active Adventures:

Trav: A definitive highlight for me has been to have my 3-year-old son want to re-enact every episode Brendan and I film and release. With every sport, activity or adventure, my boy and I have a new passion that we share in together. I also have gained great joy from hearing other parents at my son’s Day Care (and also parents from New Lambton South Public) comment that they have the same experience as well.

Brendan: My favourite thing about Active Adventures, apart from getting to spend a bit of extra time with my mate filming, is trying things that I wouldn’t have normally even considered doing. Never in my life did I think I’d be taking parkour lessons, learning how to tap dance or even learning to surf, but here I am richer for all of those experiences. Oh! And also being recognised as the pink guy from Active Adventures is pretty cool too!

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