Beau Miles: From Lecturer to 876K Subscribers

Channel: Beau Miles   Who: Beau Miles, an Australian filmmaker, author and outdoorsman from West Gippsland, Victoria   Subscribers: 876K (as of 4 November 2026)   Niche: Backyard adventures, running, making and fixing things

Beau Miles has eaten nothing but tinned beans for 40 days, walked 90 kilometres to work with no gear, run a marathon one mile per hour for a full day, and planted a tree every minute for 24 hours. He films all of it within reach of his home in Gippsland. His YouTube channel began in 2016 as part of a PhD project, and in 2021 he left his job as a university lecturer to make videos and raise his family full time. As of 4 November 2026 the channel has 876,000 subscribers, 125 videos and more than 96 million views.

From sea kayaks to a PhD

Beau was born in 1979 and grew up in West Gippsland, east of Melbourne. His father was a painter who, as Beau put it to The Outdoor Journal, worked hard his whole life to make a living from art. Beau started an undergraduate degree at Monash University in 1999, went on to lecture there in outdoor education, and earned a PhD in the subject. Before YouTube, his adventures were the big, far-away kind: he kayaked thousands of kilometres around the southern tip of Africa and ran 650 kilometres across the Australian Alps.

His YouTube channel, created in May 2016, started as part of that PhD. The first series, "Bass by Kayak", was six videos about sea kayaking, and his thesis, an autoethnographic study of sea kayak expeditions, was published by Monash in 2018.

Adventures that start at the front door

Over the next few years Beau traded expensive overseas trips for what he calls homespun adventures. He told ABC News that the mountain and sea trips had been "expensive, time-consuming and dangerous," and that he now does everything within about 100 kilometres of home. "I want to be home for dinner and I've got a little kid," he said.

In 2018 he walked more than 90 kilometres from his home in Jindivick to his office at Monash's Clayton campus, carrying nothing but the clothes he wore and scavenging food, bedding and a high-visibility vest from the roadside. He slept under an overpass and, as he told The Age, arrived at work "with $1.30 more in my pocket than when I left." That same year he filmed "A Mile an Hour", running one lap of a one-mile loop every hour for 24 hours and filling the time in between with odd jobs and building projects. It is still pinned to the top of his channel and has more than five million views. The Outdoor Journal reported that runners around the world have copied the challenge thousands of times.

Then came "The Human Bean". Inspired by a John Steinbeck novel, he ate only tinned beans for 40 days and ran an ultramarathon on the last day. ABC News reported that the video had passed 1.6 million views by May 2021.

Leaving the lecture hall

In 2021 Beau quit his lecturing job and became a full-time YouTuber and dad, and he published his first book, The Backyard Adventurer, about the move to adventures close to home. That year he also planted 1,440 trees and shrubs in a single day, one a minute for 24 hours, on a friend's paddock in West Gippsland. When The Guardian visited four years later, the gums and she-oaks were up to nine metres tall and Beau said the result was "totally worth it".

The description on "A Mile an Hour" now points fans to "tours, Patreon, books and other Beauisms". That mix is a big part of how an independent filmmaker with fewer than a million subscribers can work on films full time.

What other creators can take from it

Beau didn't need a viral stunt or a huge production crew. His videos are slow, funny and personal, and his channel banner promises "oddball films released often enough" rather than a strict schedule. What makes it work is a loyal audience that will pay for the next film, the book and the tour. You don't need 876,000 subscribers for that. A few hundred fans who want trip diaries, behind-the-scenes photos and early looks at your next project can cover a lot of the cost of making it.

You can set that up in minutes. On Yaff you can post trip diaries, photo dumps and extra videos behind monthly membership tiers, sell ebooks and guides, take tips, and talk to supporters in group chats and DMs. Starter is free with a 5% platform fee, and payouts go to your bank daily via Stripe. Start your free Yaff page and publish your first post, see pricing, or read how to fund your expedition with memberships and add Yaff to your YouTube channel.

More origin stories: From Mowing Lawns to 11M Subscribers: Primitive Technology, From Office Job to 1.9M Subscribers: Eva zu Beck and From Useless Robots to 2.9M Subscribers: Simone Giertz.

Watch Beau Miles on YouTube