Chris Bamman's 'catch and cook' adventure videos take viewers on some of the wildest fishing and camping trips available on the coast and across the state.

There's next to no talking, just the 45-year-old Moruya man - sometimes with his wife, son and daughter, a mate or his dog, but mostly alone - fishing, boating, hiking, setting up camp, bushcrafting and cooking up a storm on camera.

A fifth-generation Batemans Bay local who grew up in a house on a cliff, regularly ditched school to go exploring and started camping on his own when he was 14, Chris knows all the best secret and not-so-secret spots for these activities.

Just don't expect him to drop a pin on the locations.

"People can be very protective of their place and as soon as you start saying, 'oh, look, I'm in Moryua River', all of those locals go, 'Really? Did you have to say you were in Moruya River?'" he told the Mercury.

"That's my river and the last thing I want to do is piss off my mates who fish these holes regularly, and so I extend that to everybody, just as a courtesy to whoever lives there, and I don't really want to be responsible for spoiling anywhere."

While Chris does have a strong local following keen to get their hands on the coordinates, YouTube analytics show some 80 per cent of his audience is from overseas, something he chalks up to his (mostly) no-language videos breaking down cultural and linguistic barriers.

Instead of telling his viewers what he's doing, he simply shows them the scenery and survival skills he's spent his whole life mastering.

He'll let out an occasional laugh at the pure joy of the experience, a sigh of relief when diving into cool water after a daylong walk or even an occasional "hello" or "cheers" to a companion.

But for the most part the only sounds are from the birds, the frogs, boots on the ground, running water, dinner sizzling over the campfire and his favourite tunes.

"Everybody likes to eat nice food and have a glass of wine on a beach. It's a pretty universal happy," he said.

Chris created his YouTube channel a decade ago, but only started taking it seriously about five years ago.

"When you've done 30 years of spear-fishing, it can get a little bit repetitive if you're going to the same places," he said.

"So shooting fish while shooting through the camera put a whole new joy on it."

This move into the world of content creation also helped his recovery from a bad accident that left his back broken in three places.

"It was a really good mental outlet for the injury, so that's how it sort of snowballed; one video turned into two, turned into 100," he said.

The side hustle began to pick up, to the point where he could have made a comfortable living from it, but he soon discovered that even a passion project can start to feel like a chore when you're counting on it to pay the mortgage.

"It could sustain me, but I choose not to," he said.

"For a while I just did nothing but YouTube and it becomes like any other job. When you've literally got to go camping this week to a degree sucks the joy out of it.

"So I dialled it back to once a fortnight, once every three weeks and then with the other jobs, there's nothing like a crowbar to motivate you for sitting on a beach, drinking rum."

His other work includes landscaping and maintenance at a local brewery and one day a week as a disability support worker where he "takes a couple of guys fishing, hiking, basically just hanging out with them".

Juggling the three jobs keeps them all interesting.

Chris's videos might look like effortless fun, but each one involves hours of brainstorming, research, painstaking camera shots and video editing.

He has a list of ideas for future adventures on a big whiteboard in his shed - fly-fishing in a pebbly creek, spear-fishing in a rocky bay, boating down the river, yabbying at the lake or kayaking in alpine wilderness.

"When we're having a beer with mates, everybody's chatting and things just get added to the white board with regards to locations and targets," he said.

He generally has a rough location in mind before setting out to film, typically a place he's been before, but he says weather is the greatest dictator.

"Generally that week I'll study weather maps and if the ocean's going to be completely atrocious, I'll pick one off the board that's west," he said.

He knows a grabby video title will bump up his views, so he enjoys coming up with novel concepts like "boat in a backpack", the one where he uses a mini-inflatable dinghy to get upstream, or "tarp house on a beach" in which he crafts a sunken sand shelter out of driftwood.

While the hiking, fishing and bush survival skills are as entertaining as anything you'll watch online, it's the cooking and eating part that completes the fantasy of camping bliss.

With a mezzaluna in his camp kitchen toolkit and many hours of watching TV cooking shows under his belt, Chris knows how to serve up gourmet, made-for-YouTube camp fare.

He smokes eel in a primitive rock oven, grills nachos under hot coals, barbecues creamy fish-and-bacon cob loaf over the flames or crafts a spitroast using a bushcraft waterwheel rotisserie made on camera.

After he's done cooking, the lens captures him sitting by the water on a camp chair, restaurant-worthy dish perched on his lap, a flask of rum by his side and Under the Milky Way or some other alt-rock classic playing on his device.

"It's been a really enjoyable way of forcing quality eating while camping because, I mean, as teenagers we would just go out with half-a-dozen tins of baked beans and you wouldn't even think about the food, it was sort of just an add-on.

"But now the food is kind of the goal. We know we're going to be cooking something nice.

"It's been a welcome addition, to be honest; there's nothing like nice food and a drink to really enjoy your time.

"And because you're filming it, it's got to look nice or have a little bit of something to it."

Does he eat like a chef at home?

"I actually get a bit of stick off my wife sometimes when I come home and cook a chicken schnitzel for dinner," he laughs.

"And she's like, well, you know, what did you have yesterday? Abalone dumplings, lobster pie?"

Chris's videos have a rough structure to them, and after a day of adventure, they cut to the next morning.

The camera shows him waking up and stretching, lighting a fire to make himself maple syrup and berry pancakes, or cheesy chorizo breakfast wraps. He boils a pot of tea and rolls up his sleeping bag.

There's a close-up shot of a snail making slow progress over a rock, native flowers blowing in the breeze, a bird of prey overhead. And then it's time to head home.

The viewer's shoulders have dropped and they've made a mental note to get away soon.

My pick of pretty much the east coast of Australia is south of Eden in the Nadgee (Nature Reserve). The Nadgee wilderness area is very broad, so I'm being a little bit vague, but there are spots within that which are my favourite. That's my happy place, there's no one there, it's only accessible by foot or boat from, you know, 30 to 40 metres either side. It's untouched, it's purely just wilderness.

I've got two different kinds of cameras. I've got an above-water camera and a below-water camera and I set them all up on a tripod. So even underwater, I'll set up a tripod on lead weights just to film the swim-by scenes. And above ground, it's just a tripod. You just set it up and yeah, walk. But Nikon COOLPIX W300 is the camera I use above water and an Olympus TG-6 in housing for the underwater stuff.

No, never been lost. I have had a few wake-up moments to a degree where I was very, very remote with large packs and sort of had slips and falls and things that potentially could have ended in an injury that would stop you in your tracks. If I broke an ankle or knee or something and you're 100 kilometres from the nearest person, it's a pretty dire strait. So now I carry a satellite phone and a first-aid kit.

There's a whole universe left to put the tripod in front of. You can never run out of places because, especially with the ocean, every little next cove is so beautiful here. So all you have to do is point the camera in a slightly different direction and you've got some new content. I'll make videos until I no longer enjoy the process which I know that I never will.

Safety, safety, safety. Make sure your gear's in good order, your people know where you're going, your approximate movements and times. Other than that, enjoy it - just start easy, start with things that you know, within your capabilities. You don't have to go on a 100-kilometre journey into the middle of the Nadgee to achieve adventure. You can literally find adventure down the street from where you live.