Just Send It — Liv from This Is Livin'

About six years ago, Liv created a platform called This Is Livin' with a simple intention: to share everything that sets her heart on fire and encourage others to get out there and do the same. Four-wheel driving, spearfishing, hunting, camping, weekends away with mates — all of it. The name came from wanting to show people what living your life fully actually looks like.

"I just wanted to create a platform to encourage others, specifically young girls, to absolutely send it," she says. "I've been doing it for a hot minute now and I absolutely love it."

What started as a personal project has grown into something much bigger — a community of like-minded people all over Australia connected by a shared love of getting outdoors and doing things that scare them a little.

Before we get into the adventures, there's a story that needs to be told — because it's the reason all of this exists.

About seven years ago, Liv lost her little sister, Paris. Her world stopped. She stopped hunting, stopped camping, stopped four-wheel driving. She stopped doing all the things she loved. "I kind of hit a hole," she says quietly, "and lost myself a little bit."

Then one day, something shifted. She describes it as the universe — or Paris — giving her a kick up the backside. A feeling of: what are you doing? These are the things you loved. These are the things we used to do together. She wouldn't want you to live like this.

"I kept saying to myself, even if this only resonates with one or two people, it would be good enough for me. From that first video, it kind of went bananas." — Liv, on sharing her story publicly for the first time.

She put a video out on YouTube sharing what she'd been through and how she'd come back from it. The response was overwhelming. Messages from people all over Australia who recognised themselves in her story. One she'll never forget came from the wife of a man who had lost his brother — she wrote to tell Liv that the platform had all but saved her husband's life.

"Me and Tommy teared up. I never thought in a million years I'd have that kind of effect on a person's life."

Paris — and that moment of choosing to keep going — is woven into everything Liv does. Including naming her own daughter, who is on the way.

Liv got into hunting about ten years ago — not through a hunting family, but through a bloke she was dating at the time who hunted with his dogs. She was hooked from the first outing. And not long after, she got Tikka.

Tikka is a wolf hound bull Arab. She is nine years old. She is, without question, Liv's best mate.

It was actually Paris who pushed Liv to bring Tikka home. Tikka was part of an accidental litter and the owner wasn't too fussed about what happened to the pups. Liv wasn't sure she was ready for her first hunting dog. Paris looked at the photo and said: if you don't want her, I'll have her. Liv brought her home to find her a new owner. That lasted about five minutes.

"She melted my heart and that was it. She'd formed this bond with my little sister as well that was just very special. I was like, she's chosen me. I have no say in the matter."

"She's been with me through losing my sister, through all the ups and downs. I'm looking at her right now as I'm talking to you. I love her so much." — Liv

Tikka still howls when the hunting bag comes out. Still jumps around like a two-year-old pup. Tikka has been to Cape York. She has hunted pigs in rainforest at Cooktown that felt like another planet. She has, on at least one occasion, come running down a hill at night to rescue Liv from the crankiest pig she has ever encountered — checked in, got the nod, and got the job done like it was nothing.

"She just walked back to the car like nothing had happened."

Liv has done Cape York twice. The second time — the one she talks about like it rewired something in her — she went up with the Four Wheel Drive 247 crew, at the beginning of the season, in her own car, driving her own kilometres.

They were among the first vehicles through the Teletrack for the season. Which means the track hadn't been read yet. Which means you're going in a bit blind.

The first obstacle was Palm Creek — straight down, no gradual descent, and in Liv's words, sometimes more daunting than Gunshot itself. Then came Gunshot. The boys went first. Liv watched. There were two young girls from a passing family standing on the side watching her.

"I was like, I've got to do this for them. Come on, Liv."

"Once we were out the other side, the feeling of achievement was just incredible. The adrenaline rush was insane."

She made it all the way to the tip. Got a photo with Tikka at the northernmost point of the Australian continent. Had a cold drink. Let the moment land.

Liv hunts pigs with her dogs — Tikka and a growing pack. The dogs are trained for pig hunting specifically. But when the dogs stay home, she and Tommy go out for deer and are very happy filling the freezer with venison. Foxes and rabbits round out the list, particularly at the family farm out west where a drought is looming and the war on who is eating the grass is very real.

She spent six years as a vet nurse, which gave her a firsthand view of what feral pigs do to young livestock and what rabbits do to crops. "The frustrations that the farming and ag world go through from those pests is just absolutely devastating."

The biggest misconception she comes up against is that her hunting dogs are just tools — working animals that can't be both capable in the field and genuinely loved. She pushes back on that firmly. Her girls sleep inside. They have fluffy beds. She puts jackets on them in winter. "I don't care, they're my babies," she says, and doesn't sound even slightly apologetic about it.

Something has shifted in the last couple of years. Liv has found her crew — a group of women who hunt with their dogs, run their own trips, and have, most of them, introduced their partners to hunting rather than the other way around.

"Something about a couple of girls out bush, just with their dogs, going full send — all loving it together. That was just so empowering. There's no other word for it."

She filmed a girls-only four-wheel drive trip for YouTube and had blokes in the comments insisting there must be men behind the scenes who weren't being shown. "I'm like, what? Sounds like more hard work than it's worth." She laughs. "We're out there. We're not just piggybacking off our boyfriends."

"It's definitely showing that we're actually out there, doing it — not just taking photos when the opportunity arrives and pretending like we're doing the work." — Liv

Tommy — Liv's husband, co-adventurer, and the man Tikka had to approve before things could progress — came from a shooting family. Foxes, rabbits, the occasional pig. Liv introduced him to hunting with dogs. He introduced her to more of the shooting side. They run a diesel performance business together Monday to Friday, then spend every weekend hunting, fishing, or camping. Together, essentially, always.

"We're not divorced, so I feel like we're doing really well."

Tommy also has what Liv describes as an alter ego in the field — one that believes he is also a pig dog. He has been known to take off on foot after a pig while the actual dogs go the other direction. He once chased one at full pace through long grass, leapt over bush after bush, got within a metre or two — and faceplanted. The pig stopped, turned around, and stared at him lying on the ground.

"It was like a cartoon. This pig stops, turns around, looks at Tom lying on the floor and is like… what are you doing?"

And then there's the wedding story. The night before they got married, sixty-odd guests camping at the farm, Tommy slow-cooked a wild boar they'd shot the week before in camp ovens over a fire. He didn't tell most people what it was until after they'd eaten it.

"Our mates were like, this is actually really good. I'm like, yeah, you wouldn't expect it." She pauses. "I was so stressed. I was like, we're gonna give everyone food poisoning at our own wedding."

They didn't. It was a hit.

Ten years ago, Liv was shy. She wouldn't have dreamed of going away on a girls-only trip, or getting into a car full of blokes she'd just met and driving the Teletrack at the start of the season. She would have leaned on her partner for everything in the field.

What hunting — and four-wheel driving and spearfishing and just saying yes — has given her is the knowledge of how capable she actually is. "When you're put in situations where you don't really have any other option, you just get it done," she says. "And you go, where did that come from?"

"Just send it. Saying yes to new adventures and experiences and doing things that might be out of your comfort zone and scare the hell out of you — but doing them anyway, because you never know where it's going to take you." — Liv

And when she drove home from that first big trip with the Four Wheel Drive 247 crew, she pulled over and cried. Not from relief. From the feeling of: I did it. "I used to watch those boys and think, how cool would it be to see a girl on a trip like that. And then to somewhat be the first girl to do it — I was just so overwhelmed."

Liv is about to become a mum. A little girl is on her way, and Liv wants her to grow up in a community of women who will support her, encourage her, and show her that there are no limits on what she can do outdoors.

"I want her to have a safe place where she feels like she can absolutely chase her dreams, do any kind of hobby she wants, and have a community around her that's going to support her and let her grow into the person she wants to be."

Tikka, for her part, is going to have a baby pulling her ears soon. Liv doesn't think she'll mind.

"I hope that when people look at me, they see a girl who, despite what's been thrown at her, was able to overcome it — and through that, helped others do the same. It's a story, but also a lesson on what can be achieved when you say yes to life, really put yourself out there, and just go full send into it." — Liv

In loving memory of Paris Kamper — March 2003 – June 2018.