Speaker 1: When you actually prioritize your own happiness and well being
Speaker 1: and yet you get paid less, your happiness will be
Speaker 1: worth more. Keep something in your school life or your
Speaker 1: life that you actually like doing. It's not about how
Speaker 1: you get there. There are a lot of different ways,
Speaker 1: and there'll never be a clean journey, and if there is,
Speaker 1: it'll probably be pretty boring and underwhelming.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Sees the YA Podcast. Busy and happy
Speaker 2: are not the same thing. We too rarely question what
Speaker 2: makes the heart seeing. We work, then we rest, but
Speaker 2: rarely we play and often don't realize there's more than
Speaker 2: one way. So this is a platform to hear and
Speaker 2: explore the stories of those who found lives. They adore
Speaker 2: the good, bad and ugly. The best and worst day
Speaker 2: will bear all the facets of seizing your yay. I'm
Speaker 2: Sarah Davidson or a spoonful of Sarah, a lawyer turned
Speaker 2: entrepreneur who swapped the suits and heels to co found
Speaker 2: matcha Maiden and matcha Milk Bark. CZA is a series
Speaker 2: of conversations on finding a life you love and exploring
Speaker 2: the self doubt, challenge, joy and fulfillment along the way.
Speaker 2: I am so excited about this week's guest, and how
Speaker 2: wild that coincides with the very weekend I landed in
Speaker 2: Antarctica exactly a year ago. Time has flown so much.
Speaker 2: I still can't believe that actually happened. It's kind of
Speaker 2: like a dream of going to a different planet. But
Speaker 2: how amazing to get to relive it all in this episode.
Speaker 2: I'm so pumped to have David Knoff with us this week.
Speaker 2: You'll be able to hear in my voice very quickly,
Speaker 2: how fascinating I found his apath yay, not only his
Speaker 2: Antarctic journey, which you'll hear all about, but all the
Speaker 2: crazy dots that had to connect to get him there.
Speaker 2: Think starting off with doing woodwork in Vce, do a
Speaker 2: career as an officer in the Army, commanding a whole
Speaker 2: platoon with the Regional Assistants Mission at Solomon Islands, turned
Speaker 2: diplomat at the Australian High Commission in Pakistan, which then
Speaker 2: became their secretary at the Australian Embassy in Iraq, with
Speaker 2: a side of professional photography in Turkey, metals for formation,
Speaker 2: skydiving in Dubai, and even some records in splitboarding, which
Speaker 2: by the way is a hybrid snowboard that can be
Speaker 2: separated into cross country skis for ascent. And that's all
Speaker 2: before he became an Antarctic station leader at Davis Station,
Speaker 2: which is not only already a uniquely intense and challenging
Speaker 2: role to Phil let alone, when you get stuck there
Speaker 2: during an unprecedented global pandemic for five hundred and thirty
Speaker 2: seven days, you can only imagine how interesting that story is,
Speaker 2: such that he has written it all into an incredible
Speaker 2: book which I absolutely poured over. With more exciting projects
Speaker 2: related to that story on the horizon. I'll let David
Speaker 2: tell you more about it himself. He's a far better storyteller,
Speaker 2: but I hope you find it as captivating and invigorating
Speaker 2: as I did. There is more side note. For some reason,
Speaker 2: I use the same exact setup with microphones and everything
Speaker 2: as I usually do, but my audio got a little
Speaker 2: bit distorted and we don't know why. We've fixed it up.
Speaker 2: Mostly but his audio is far better than mine. He
Speaker 2: had a pro set up, So for any of those
Speaker 2: very accustomed ears who noticed my audio isn't as good
Speaker 2: as usual, my apologies, but I hope you enjoy it. Nonetheless,
Speaker 2: David welcome to seize thea.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. I can't wait to delve into this.
Speaker 2: I am so excited about this. I just mentioned off
Speaker 2: here that we have been chatting for a little while.
Speaker 2: In fact, we had one RANDO call that just went
Speaker 2: for like an hour and a half that was just
Speaker 2: becoming mates. But also with the Antarctic connection, I landed
Speaker 2: in Antarctica on this day last year, so this was
Speaker 2: meant to be.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, And I mean I was just saying as well,
Speaker 1: like this is quite early in the Antarctic summer to
Speaker 1: get down there, so it would have been great to go.
Speaker 1: Like the first time I ever went down was a
Speaker 1: tourist as well, back in sort of twenty fifteen or something.
Speaker 1: We went in sort of January and at the peak
Speaker 1: of summer, whereas you would have still got it in November,
Speaker 1: you can still get some very very cold temperatures, you
Speaker 1: still had a lot of sea ice, and the wildlife
Speaker 1: is still kind of returning from its winter abroad and
Speaker 1: then they all go back to Antarctica for the summer.
Speaker 2: And we did hear that. I had a couple of
Speaker 2: people say who had been in sort of the November,
Speaker 2: like there were a lot more whales later in the season.
Speaker 2: But they also were like, oh my god, the smell.
Speaker 2: And I was like, what smell? We had pristine ice,
Speaker 2: like nothing had been touched for a whole winter. It
Speaker 2: was amazing. I didn't smell anything.
Speaker 1: I love that because I had someone the other day
Speaker 1: chatting her out because I'm heading back down to Antartica
Speaker 1: this summer as well, and it was sort of gearing
Speaker 1: up and doing some training and stuff, and so I
Speaker 1: was like, I really really wanted to spend a night
Speaker 1: like out at a penguin colony, just like in and
Speaker 1: amongst it. And I'm like, well, first of all, under
Speaker 1: the permitting regulations, you're not really supposed to do that.
Speaker 1: Second of all, the mini you've smelled a penguin rookery
Speaker 1: and a colony. It's spectacular, but the smell will put
Speaker 1: you off ever spending any longer than the minimum amount
Speaker 1: of time.
Speaker 2: It's pungent, like not from Antarctica, from other experiences. And
Speaker 2: we actually did this random thing out in Sorrento where
Speaker 2: you can swim out to the seal. There's like this
Speaker 2: I think it's the some famous hut anyway on the peninsula,
Speaker 2: and all these seals like have made it their home
Speaker 2: and you can go and dive and with your snorkel on.
Speaker 2: It's fine. Accidentally took my snorkel off. I was like,
Speaker 2: I'm going to die, like I am deceased from the
Speaker 2: scent of the fish and the wee. Oh my god,
Speaker 2: it was so much so I can't even imagine. But
Speaker 2: I have just finished your incredible, incredible book, Five hundred
Speaker 2: and thirty seven Days of Winter, And as you listeners know,
Speaker 2: I dropped hints last week and a lot of you
Speaker 2: were already very excited without knowing anything really about David's
Speaker 2: story that he's an antarctic expert, among so many other things.
Speaker 2: I cannot wait to get into this. But before we do,
Speaker 2: I start every episode with a little a little ice
Speaker 2: freaker never been more relevant, which is to ask, what
Speaker 2: is the most down to earth thing about you? Because
Speaker 2: you have an incredibly impressive resume You've done before the
Speaker 2: Antarctica chapter even starts. You've done incredible things, and I
Speaker 2: think we all just need to know that you're a
Speaker 2: regular dude who does weird, quirky, down to earthshit.
Speaker 1: Oh I regaon the best one at the moment, I'm
Speaker 1: so excited by my house plants and one of my
Speaker 1: projects in Lockdown twenty twenty one, amongst writing the book,
Speaker 1: was seating avocado pips and being like, right, avocados aren't
Speaker 1: supposed to grow in Melbourne, but I'm going to just
Speaker 1: every avocado I eat, I'm going to work with the
Speaker 1: pips and try and grow them. And now I have
Speaker 1: two years gone after that, one of my avocado trees
Speaker 1: in the back. I was standing there and stare at it,
Speaker 1: going like that was a pip that I like, was
Speaker 1: that was an avocado pip from an avocado I ate,
Speaker 1: And now look at it, it's a tree. I'm so
Speaker 1: proud of it. It's just so that's probably the dorkiest,
Speaker 1: down to us, least adventurous thing about me at the moment.
Speaker 2: I love how it's like the basic pleasures of not
Speaker 2: living in Antarctica is that you could have plants like
Speaker 2: an avocado, Like how exciting, Oh my god, of course
Speaker 2: you would have had avocados.
Speaker 1: We have. Yeah, So it's funny with the food we
Speaker 1: did and didn't have down there, and even you would
Speaker 1: have seen this on a short trip to the peninsula,
Speaker 1: like bananas and some of these things they just don't
Speaker 1: last eve. You just can't freeze them properly. You can
Speaker 1: dehydrate them, and I did get addicted to dehydrated banana
Speaker 1: only en half and they're a very acquiet taste. I've
Speaker 1: tried them now that I'm back, and you're like, nah,
Speaker 1: not really, but yeah, avocados you have, like guacamole paste,
Speaker 1: you can you can craze people that. It's just like
Speaker 1: that's the sort of stuff from your supermarket aisle that
Speaker 1: you look at it and go, oh, I don't have
Speaker 1: time to make Guacamoleans buy that, and no one really
Speaker 1: enjoys it that much. That's all you get. I mean,
Speaker 1: these are first very problem because in so many ways,
Speaker 1: the food down there on the Antarctic stations and even
Speaker 1: some of the more adventurous expeditions, it's pretty good. There's
Speaker 1: no parasite, like, there's no flies, there's no bugs and ISOs,
Speaker 1: and it's ninety nine percent of the time it's at
Speaker 1: least below fridge temperatures, so below four degrees or freezing.
Speaker 1: You can leave your food outside. He's got to put
Speaker 1: in the shape with some stew on the top of it.
Speaker 1: You can just leave anyway, just leave it anyway, Like
Speaker 1: you just bet people like, oh, what do you do
Speaker 1: with food? And then you go, well, how much of
Speaker 1: your diet these days is frozen? And they go oh, yeah, wow,
Speaker 1: and exactly so we you know, we're stuck there for
Speaker 1: a year and a half and still right at the
Speaker 1: end of that we still had eggs. Now, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: describe them as fresh.
Speaker 2: Fresh is not the word I'd use.
Speaker 1: But no, but the especially preserved they but this like
Speaker 1: oil coating on them, and this company and tassy that
Speaker 1: do it. Then you keep them at the right temperature
Speaker 1: and in the right locations, and you just make sure
Speaker 1: that when you're cracking them, you're cracking them all separately
Speaker 1: if you're putting a bunch together, so if you get
Speaker 1: a rotten one, it's not it doesn't small, but you
Speaker 1: kind of go wow, like, in terms of food technology,
Speaker 1: we've come a long way from you one hundred years ago.
Speaker 1: When they went tied together. They kind of have like
Speaker 1: tinned meat and see a blood, add some pepper to it.
Speaker 2: I mean, that was one of my favorite parts. I mean,
Speaker 2: apart from the more awe inspiring and like hated leadership
Speaker 2: questions and the rescue missions and actually it was like
Speaker 2: the banal kind of day to day what do you
Speaker 2: actually do on an Antarctic station that I found so
Speaker 2: fascinating because it's just so foreign for most people to
Speaker 2: read about. Like this is what I love about this
Speaker 2: show is I get to dive into lifestyles that you
Speaker 2: don't have to live the lifestyle to hear from someone
Speaker 2: who's done it to kind of like live it yourself.
Speaker 2: But before we get there, my favorite thing about getting
Speaker 2: to spend time with people like you is to trace
Speaker 2: back that people will meet you through your book or
Speaker 2: through your public speaking and you're an Antarctic expedition leader
Speaker 2: who's gone on this incredibly once in a lifetime journey
Speaker 2: at a time when the world has never seen you know,
Speaker 2: there's so many big ticket things, and forget that you
Speaker 2: were once a kid who had no idea he'd end
Speaker 2: up here, who had to make decisions about your career,
Speaker 2: who had an entire career before this. By the way,
Speaker 2: and I've got you know, in my kind of like
Speaker 2: weird creep research, have gone back to like the subjects
Speaker 2: that you studied at school and like what you thought
Speaker 2: that would translate to. And I think tracing back to
Speaker 2: who you were as a kid and all the decisions
Speaker 2: it took to get you here is what's really relatable
Speaker 2: for people listening who don't know where they could end
Speaker 2: up one day, and that it could be on an
Speaker 2: Antarctic station. So can you take us back to three
Speaker 2: kids in Clint Waverley physics maths would work keeping your
Speaker 2: options open for after school, your first jobs. You know,
Speaker 2: what was your childhood like and who did you think
Speaker 2: you'd be?
Speaker 1: Well, that that is taking it a long way back.
Speaker 2: It's my specialty. Let's throw back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So yeah, graffic club where there was the
Speaker 1: second of three kids parents. Parents ran a small business
Speaker 1: which I think in so many ways set the three
Speaker 1: of us kids up in terms of we didn't see
Speaker 1: it as a like the whole family was the business
Speaker 1: and that yes, dad went to work and mom went
Speaker 1: to work, and we went to work. There in the
Speaker 1: school holidays we were running like an automotive parts business.
Speaker 1: So in the holidays we'd go and working around sticking
Speaker 1: orders and learning all that stuff which under modern workplace
Speaker 1: health and safety you would just be completely not You
Speaker 1: cannot get a twelve year old kid on school holidays
Speaker 1: to pick orders in a warehouse on a skateboard while
Speaker 1: there's forklifts in operations.
Speaker 2: I was going to say, were you fourteen and nine
Speaker 2: months Let's pretend you were, like yeah, anyway.
Speaker 1: Won't name the company, but yeah, it was ally it's easy.
Speaker 1: You got good at skateboarding, and so I think that
Speaker 1: set us up. We sort of had a good work
Speaker 1: ethic from a young age. But also we're fairly free
Speaker 1: range kids. This was in the nineties out in gloomily
Speaker 1: pretty safe suburb we'd ride bmx's and or skateboards or
Speaker 1: rollerbades or whatever the phase of your childhood was for
Speaker 1: your method of transport out into the parklands, and you
Speaker 1: just you'd go and then you've got to be home
Speaker 1: by sunset sort of thing. And there was a group
Speaker 1: of other kids down the street and around the corner,
Speaker 1: and you kind of just off you went. And I
Speaker 1: think as well, I was lucky enough to go to
Speaker 1: a school that had outdoor ed programs, and those memories
Speaker 1: from school were my favorite ones of those those camps.
Speaker 1: And it's such a shame here as well now that
Speaker 1: a lot of schools have shied away from camps and
Speaker 1: overnight camping for a for whole range of reasons, and
Speaker 1: I just looked back up. But that was the best
Speaker 1: part of school. Now, obviously not every kid loves the outdoors,
Speaker 1: but I really loved getting out saying intense and learning
Speaker 1: how to do that well. And so yeah, when it
Speaker 1: got to then academia and school, I wanted to be
Speaker 1: an engineer, and looking back, I didn't want to be
Speaker 1: an engineer, but it made sense. I liked building stuff,
Speaker 1: I've been creative, and I was relatively good at physics
Speaker 1: and maths and some pretty classic boys sort of skills,
Speaker 1: and so then that was the path that I was
Speaker 1: going down. Yet when it got to them picking subjects
Speaker 1: for year twelve, as you said, I was like, no,
Speaker 1: I really want to do woodwork, and the cruise adviser
Speaker 1: is like work for like do another math, So I'm like,
Speaker 1: I hate the one that's I have to do. Why
Speaker 1: am I doing two maths? I want to do woodwork.
Speaker 1: I want to have I want to do something practical.
Speaker 1: And there was two of us at the school that
Speaker 1: were doing kind of your physics and advanced maths and
Speaker 1: would work but keep something in your school life or
Speaker 1: your life that you actually like doing. And that became
Speaker 1: such a and then even to this day now when
Speaker 1: renovating my house, I built my kitchen bench, I built
Speaker 1: coffee tables around my house, and rebuilt my staircase. All
Speaker 1: these carpentry skills and someone's like, hey, we have to
Speaker 1: learn how to do this stuff. I like, I did
Speaker 1: DC would work? Would work? Yeah. It basically led you
Speaker 1: to a cabinet maker's apprenticeship, which I didn't go and do.
Speaker 1: So my cabinet making skills they're not that good, but
Speaker 1: they're good enough. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was going to say that don't sound terrible.
Speaker 1: Exactly, whereas I have just not used algebra as often
Speaker 1: in my day to day life. Trigonometry, yes, you do
Speaker 1: need a bit of that with cabinet making. That was
Speaker 1: and they got to UNI and started doing an engineering degree,
Speaker 1: likely it was a double degree engineering Arts, and like
Speaker 1: two years into that, I just I don't want to
Speaker 1: be an engineer. Nothing about it inspired me, and I
Speaker 1: bailed on that spent I joined the Army Reserve. When
Speaker 1: its transferred to full time service with the Army. I'm like,
Speaker 1: this is unreal, getting me outdoors, it's leadership, it's all
Speaker 1: these things I didn't really know I wanted to do
Speaker 1: in life, and just straight away I found it. I'm like, great,
Speaker 1: I love this. It's practical, it's adventurous, and it's a
Speaker 1: good gig. And then I've got to go overseas with
Speaker 1: the army as well as a platoon commander, so leading
Speaker 1: sort of thirty soldiers. I've been through officer training. Took
Speaker 1: a platoon over the Solomon Islands in two thousand and
Speaker 1: seven on a peacekeeping mission. And while I deferred UNI,
Speaker 1: you know, most people's gap years, you go to Canada
Speaker 1: and go snowboarding. Background up.
Speaker 2: You can just get wasted in pubs in Europe and
Speaker 2: you're like commanding soldiers in the Solomon.
Speaker 1: Islands, which was I mean, it was a pretty We
Speaker 1: called it an armed vacation, so it certainly wasn't it
Speaker 1: wasn't that dangerous in the war warlike kind of way.
Speaker 1: But it was still just amazing. And I got back
Speaker 1: and then went right, that's it. I'm not going back
Speaker 1: to engineering. I'm going to finish my art's degree. And
Speaker 1: at the time then had started working with Foreign Affairs
Speaker 1: and Trade to get a job with them later on
Speaker 1: and succeeds. We did a lot of joint work with
Speaker 1: them under the Regional Assistance Mission and Solon Islands. So
Speaker 1: I got back, finished my Arts degree with the politics major,
Speaker 1: joined Foreign Affairs and Trade, and spent the next ten
Speaker 1: years as a diplomat before joining the Antarctic programs.
Speaker 2: So wild. I love that we actually connected through the
Speaker 2: wonderful Dean of Arts as both graduates of Wanash University
Speaker 2: Arts faculty. And how funny it was that you were, like,
Speaker 2: I am proof that with a plain arts degree, which
Speaker 2: most people don't know what to do with because it's
Speaker 2: so broad, you can do these incredible things and go
Speaker 2: and like I mean, like literally, I've said this to you before,
Speaker 2: and everyone listening knows. For some random reason that has
Speaker 2: nothing to do with anything in my life, military and
Speaker 2: international diplomacy is like my jam. It's like the thing
Speaker 2: I would have done if I didn't go into business.
Speaker 2: That's what I would have used law for. So reading
Speaker 2: about you going, you know, from Solomon Islands to Canberra
Speaker 2: to then oh, let's just like hang out in this
Speaker 2: lava bard for like five years before Antarctica. Like, it's
Speaker 2: just wild that this is your journey, but also a
Speaker 2: really interesting kind of reiteration of the idea that also
Speaker 2: your life happens in chapters. So like in the army chapter,
Speaker 2: you might have thought this is going to be my career.
Speaker 2: I'll be military, but then actually it's diplomacy. And then
Speaker 2: you do that for five years or six years or whatever,
Speaker 2: and then suddenly it's like, no, it's time for a
Speaker 2: next chapter. And I think we all think that we
Speaker 2: need to find our dream job, and then we arrive
Speaker 2: there and then we stay there for the rest of
Speaker 2: our life. And it's like, actually, life is always evolving
Speaker 2: in these like these chapters that inevitably you'll kind of
Speaker 2: like get to one new thing, it'll stretch you, your comfort
Speaker 2: zone will catch up to you. You know it's time
Speaker 2: for something new. So I'd love to hear how, firstly,
Speaker 2: I mean how going from sort of done trun to
Speaker 2: then changing your whole skill set to diplomacy and then
Speaker 2: working in these high risk, high intensity environments, what that
Speaker 2: was like, because that's my favorite big personally. But then
Speaker 2: also when you know that it's time to move out
Speaker 2: of something like that into something new.
Speaker 1: It's so right. And I know so many people that
Speaker 1: chase their dream job and it's just not what it
Speaker 1: cracked up to be for so many different reasons, and yeah,
Speaker 1: that idea of eye I want to and I say
Speaker 1: this one when I talk to school students, either kind
Speaker 1: of in an actual session or just one on one. Hey,
Speaker 1: they want to ask questions. Always say like, there are
Speaker 1: so many careers out there where there is no path. Now,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of job You want to be a doctor,
Speaker 1: you've got to go and do that. You've got good
Speaker 1: Mark's got to get into medicine. You've got to be
Speaker 1: a doctor. Then there's like a hundred different types of
Speaker 1: doctors you can be. You can be a doctor that
Speaker 1: just sits at one cleaning at their whole life and
Speaker 1: does the same thing and work with retires after fifty years,
Speaker 1: or you can go and do a million other things
Speaker 1: within that career. But yet, there's so many jobs out there,
Speaker 1: and I look at my kind of job and lifestyle
Speaker 1: now and there is no set career. PATS. Everyone asked
Speaker 1: that around around DEFAT. They're like, how did to get
Speaker 1: into DEFAT? Now? Classic way to get into DEFAT is
Speaker 1: you do an international relations degree. Like international relations, you
Speaker 1: get a master's in it or a PhD. And you
Speaker 1: speak Japanese and Chinese and French and Italian or something
Speaker 1: like that and you go bang and you're into it,
Speaker 1: they'll hire you, right, that's what they want. There are
Speaker 1: so many people within Foreign Affairs and Trade and that
Speaker 1: represent Australia overseas at our embasses who have just completely
Speaker 1: illogical career into that, but they're great at it because
Speaker 1: that's what you need, you mean, diplomats. From what people
Speaker 1: see is but the most obvious thing they see is
Speaker 1: dealing with consular issues overseas in Australia that's banged up
Speaker 1: abroad and something's gone wrong and they're incarcerated or they've
Speaker 1: lost all their belongings have been robbed, and all the
Speaker 1: response to say like the Barley bombings or something, the
Speaker 1: embassy official is going to do that. The last thing
Speaker 1: you want is a bunch of just PhD students and
Speaker 1: international relations like you need a combination. And so there's
Speaker 1: some very very practical backgrounds from all. One of my
Speaker 1: mates has got an agricultural degree and he's a great
Speaker 1: diplomat and it's just his pathways into that. So that's
Speaker 1: something as well I think people forget is it's not
Speaker 1: about how you get there. That there are a lot
Speaker 1: of different ways and there will never be a clean journey,
Speaker 1: and if there is, it'll probably be pretty boring underwhelming.
Speaker 1: But to back up then to your real question, there
Speaker 1: is around like okay, well, how do you know when
Speaker 1: to change careers? And you're right, Like, when I was
Speaker 1: in the army, I loved it. I was really enjoyed
Speaker 1: being being an officer and being an infantry soldier as well.
Speaker 1: Like it it was everything I wanted and I kind
Speaker 1: of felt that when I got back from my trip
Speaker 1: to the Sollis, I'm like Geez and most of the
Speaker 1: other old old veterans and everyone and other people I
Speaker 1: spoke to, they were like, it doesn't get much better
Speaker 1: than that, like leading your platoon on your first TRIPID
Speaker 1: And I'm like, now, I really I wanted to go
Speaker 1: to war in so many it sounds so stupid, but
Speaker 1: you do. When you're a soldier, you kind of wanting,
Speaker 1: you want to go and do something. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: maybe that was enough. I got to lead a peacekeeping
Speaker 1: patrol and did some cool little bits in there, and
Speaker 1: there's a great story at the end of the book
Speaker 1: around that of kind of like, oh, that's that's about
Speaker 1: as good as it gets for an infantry officer. And
Speaker 1: at the time then I realized that the Army doesn't
Speaker 1: give you a lot of choice in your career. It'll
Speaker 1: tell you where you're going, and you can have And
Speaker 1: I know some stellar army officers who just through no
Speaker 1: fault of their own, missed out on a lot of troops,
Speaker 1: didn't get to Afghanistan, or went once in a kind
Speaker 1: of advisory headquarters role where they don't feel like they
Speaker 1: really did what they wanted to do. And so I
Speaker 1: kind of saw that and went, nah, I don't want
Speaker 1: to do that. I want more control. And Front Affairs
Speaker 1: gave me a lot more control everywhere to go, because
Speaker 1: I ended up going to places like Pakistan and Iraq
Speaker 1: and not going to the embassies in Paris or Tokyo
Speaker 1: or new and yet, because you could do that, you
Speaker 1: could do that later when you've got a family. But
Speaker 1: b we get along in those like this. It's fascinating work.
Speaker 1: But I'm like, no, I want to go and work
Speaker 1: at an embassy where we don't get along. And then
Speaker 1: a decade after that, in and around the conflict zones,
Speaker 1: I just realized I'm like, you know what, I'm pretty
Speaker 1: tired of this. I then cornered myself with that career
Speaker 1: that I probably wasn't that competitive to then get a
Speaker 1: job in Vienna or London or somewhere like that. I
Speaker 1: was going to have to go back to Canberra for
Speaker 1: a while, wait another couple of years, reskill internally to
Speaker 1: get out to one of those places. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know what, three years in camera just doesn't do
Speaker 1: it for me.
Speaker 2: Oh really, that's so surprising.
Speaker 1: Nothing against camera.
Speaker 2: Especially with your personality as is emerging from the things.
Speaker 1: You like to do well. I I spent two years
Speaker 1: in camera and I did love it. You could get
Speaker 1: mountain biking for work and it's two hours from the
Speaker 1: ski fields, two hours from the coaster. It's not too bad.
Speaker 2: I mean it's no Pakistan or the Antarctic Peninsula, but
Speaker 2: it's got a lot going for it.
Speaker 1: Like Islamabad, the great mountain biking story before worked then in.
Speaker 2: Camera is Lamabad Safe safe, you know, just.
Speaker 1: Both designed by so Walter Burley Griffin had a hand
Speaker 1: stop it dead set, dead set Burley Griffin had I'm
Speaker 1: pretty big. I'm pretty sure that was the room of it.
Speaker 1: It is roundabouts and straight lines everywhere. Islamabad is designed
Speaker 1: by the same guy, but so I have my mountain
Speaker 1: bike over there, and Islamabad is nestled up against a
Speaker 1: set of hills called the Margala Hills, which essentially start
Speaker 1: from the kind of flatness of the Punjab province of Pakistan,
Speaker 1: but then it heads so from Lamabad north is the
Speaker 1: Margala Hills and then eventually gets into the Characa Range
Speaker 1: and then heads up into the kind of you know,
Speaker 1: the highest points of Earth and hits k two, et cetera. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you've got these just spectacular hills that go straight
Speaker 1: out of Zlamabad. And I had when a couple of
Speaker 1: mates of minds I had mountain bikes having we go
Speaker 1: before work and you go up these hiking trails that
Speaker 1: weren't really mountain bike trails, but if you went early
Speaker 1: enough on a day, you just you didn't think there
Speaker 1: be people. But one morning I was I was honing
Speaker 1: honing down the hills on my mountain bike having a ball,
Speaker 1: when like a wild ball ran in front of me
Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh wow, like ah, and that's not
Speaker 1: it wasn't too crazy. But then like a bunch of
Speaker 1: dudes just started firing rifles and were like hunting and
Speaker 1: chasing the boar, and I'm like, Okay, that's about a dang,
Speaker 1: Like I was just killed nobody cross fire, because like
Speaker 1: these these dudes are obviously going like, oh, if we
Speaker 1: go hunting in the hills, no one's hiking this early.
Speaker 1: They hadn't expected that idiots would be mountain biking that early.
Speaker 1: So you kind of yeah, one of those moments.
Speaker 2: So do you think that, Like one of the things
Speaker 2: that fascinates me is that we are just conditioned to
Speaker 2: sort of think that certain pathways are better than others,
Speaker 2: or that we should be siloed in this particular way
Speaker 2: if our personality is X, y Z, And it fascinates
Speaker 2: me that actually we're just all built to find what
Speaker 2: I call yay, like your fulfillment or your joy or
Speaker 2: whatever it is, in completely different things. So what I
Speaker 2: would think of, I mean, probably there's a part of
Speaker 2: my personality that would have been very suited to that,
Speaker 2: because I do really thrive on that adrenaline and risk
Speaker 2: and danger in a diplomacy context, like I love the
Speaker 2: idea of working on international conflicts. But some people would
Speaker 2: think what you did in Pakistan and in that diplomacy
Speaker 2: chapter of your life is their nightmare, not only would
Speaker 2: they not actively seek it. It's like they would never
Speaker 2: You couldn't pay them to go and do that. But
Speaker 2: obviously for you it was like something that felt like
Speaker 2: an amazing career at that time. So like, what was
Speaker 2: it that drew you to it? Was it the challenge?
Speaker 2: Was it outdoors? Was it the risk?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Are you an adrenaline junkie?
Speaker 1: I have been told I'm an adrenaline junkie.
Speaker 2: I have been informed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I resent the term because I like, I take
Speaker 1: calculated risks. And you're absolutely right. The reason I went
Speaker 1: into the army and diplomacy and the stuff I do now,
Speaker 1: the Antarctic program and those trips. Yeah, there's elements of
Speaker 1: uncertainty and danger, but that's life, the natural order of things.
Speaker 1: And you look at the animal world and our evolution
Speaker 1: as a species. We never knew where our meals were
Speaker 1: coming from, and then we created all society and order
Speaker 1: and all these things to kind of give you you
Speaker 1: want a balance of Okay, we know that if we've
Speaker 1: got we've got grains and crops. Now we've got a
Speaker 1: village of one hundred and fifty people, and we can
Speaker 1: go from there and you could start any but still
Speaker 1: you would go off on the hunt, or the season's changing,
Speaker 1: we need to move higher ground as a community, and
Speaker 1: everyone packs up and you bring the kids, and you
Speaker 1: do all the stuff, and you go out the front door,
Speaker 1: and you have to go on these adventures. That's how
Speaker 1: we're designed to operate. That's how every other species on
Speaker 1: the planet operates. They don't have the comfort zones and
Speaker 1: everything that we've created, all these man made structures. And
Speaker 1: even I love one of my favorite quotes that I
Speaker 1: don't know where it's from, but someone was telling me
Speaker 1: this morning about oh, we're trying to get some cargo
Speaker 1: and one of the flights we've got and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: we might have to stuff it in our own bags,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, no, forget about it. We own the planes,
Speaker 1: we own the contracts, we can all of these rules
Speaker 1: are man made. There is no man made law that
Speaker 1: can't be broken. Nice great only laws that matter are
Speaker 1: the laws of physics, because everything else is a man
Speaker 1: made construct, and there's probably a way around it in
Speaker 1: terms of we can get approvals or we can change this.
Speaker 1: And half the time, especially if it's a government funded trip,
Speaker 1: you're like, well, we probably wrote the blood guidelines, so
Speaker 1: we can probably there's been some government is so hello,
Speaker 1: this is I always like love debugging conspiracy theories to
Speaker 1: people like, oh the government does this, and like what
Speaker 1: about Antarctica. There's like, you know, secret bases and all
Speaker 1: these things, Like have you met the government?
Speaker 2: Governments?
Speaker 1: There's no way that the government couldn't conspiracy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're struggling with the things that are overt.
Speaker 1: The rest I mean, and that's just a function of
Speaker 1: the size of how compling up the amount of times
Speaker 1: government is fighting. I've gone way off track.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, actually the government versus government thing has brought
Speaker 2: me back to your Antarctic adventure because there's a huge
Speaker 2: operation in the books that I'll get to that involve
Speaker 2: different governments, which again is like so fascinating to me.
Speaker 2: But I personally would love to spend more time on
Speaker 2: the military and on diplomacy because that's my jam, but
Speaker 2: I want to spend a lot of the episode on
Speaker 2: your Awntarctic experience. So moving on to sort of the
Speaker 2: transition away from one career again to this totally new career,
Speaker 2: which seems like it has a lot in common with
Speaker 2: the outdoors and leadership and all that, but obviously is
Speaker 2: completely different. You had to retrain. You also had this
Speaker 2: transitional period where guys like this guy come on. He
Speaker 2: then worked as a freelance photographer, made like skydiving records,
Speaker 2: has qualified in open water diving, Like there's basically nothing
Speaker 2: he can't do. It became like a hybrid snowboarder who
Speaker 2: like broke all these records, Like just just a really
Speaker 2: relaxed gardening leave that you took in between your two jobs.
Speaker 2: How did you know that you were at the end
Speaker 2: of a chapter? And then I think what's most overwhelming
Speaker 2: for people, particularly if they get thrown into that involuntarily
Speaker 2: like soral redundancy or COVID or whatever. How do you
Speaker 2: rEFInd a new pathway then and find your place in
Speaker 2: the water. It's like you're almost going back to the
Speaker 2: end of high school and it's like, hey, be whoever
Speaker 2: you want now, Like, how do you do that?
Speaker 1: I think the minute you know and I don't know
Speaker 1: where you got things. I don't hold any records from
Speaker 1: I've done. I've certainly done a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2: One of the first people to snowboard down a range
Speaker 2: of peaks on the Antarctic pinicially using slip boards.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's Guinness record. It's just a record hard place
Speaker 1: to get to that few people have away.
Speaker 2: He's humble, guy is humble. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But I think that the look, and I use that
Speaker 1: in my talks and stuff, is around the link to resilience.
Speaker 1: People go, how do you get so resilient? I'm like,
Speaker 1: just you need to know why you're doing something. The
Speaker 1: minute you know why you're doing it, and you've you've
Speaker 1: got a high level of desire to succeed or even
Speaker 1: get to a location or achieve that goal your set.
Speaker 1: But the minute you don't, and the minute you kind
Speaker 1: of find yourself going like, oh why am I doing this?
Speaker 1: Or oh you know, it's a good paycheck, or it
Speaker 1: you know, it's you know, it's just like I need
Speaker 1: to do this for another two years too, And then
Speaker 1: I can be like nah, the minute you're talking like that,
Speaker 1: or you're telling that to yourself or you hear yourself
Speaker 1: telling that story to others, you need to get out
Speaker 1: of it now. It's the world is a complicated, complicated place,
Speaker 1: so you do have to factor in like, Okay, I
Speaker 1: can't just quit my job and do something else. But
Speaker 1: I think COVID taught This lesson to a lot of people.
Speaker 1: If you haven't learned this through COVID, learn it now
Speaker 1: on this podcast, is that when you actually prioritize your
Speaker 1: own happiness and well being and yet you get paid less,
Speaker 1: you'll be your happiness will be worth more and then
Speaker 1: you'll find you you're better at it and you'll just
Speaker 1: the whole thing works better when you've got more time
Speaker 1: with your family or more time to focus on your
Speaker 1: side hustle all your passions, but your your core money
Speaker 1: earner or bread breadwinning kind of job. Don't let that
Speaker 1: define you. And I tell peoples well, like don't get
Speaker 1: out of bed for someone other than yourself. Like you're
Speaker 1: getting out of bed to do something you want to do.
Speaker 1: And if that and yeah, if you've got to get
Speaker 1: up and you've got to be at work at seven
Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning, are cool, Get you're getting up
Speaker 1: at five so you can then do something that you
Speaker 1: want to do. And that might be standing in the
Speaker 1: backyard and look at your avocado and like avocado flap,
Speaker 1: I did that, or your kids or your dog, or
Speaker 1: you have some fitness stuff, or get up and read
Speaker 1: a book, because then you get out of bed and
Speaker 1: you did something you wanted to do and then you go,
Speaker 1: I now better go earn some money and pay the bills,
Speaker 1: because you know life. But then outside of that, and
Speaker 1: one of the cool things on the Antarctic stations is, yeah,
Speaker 1: we will work sort of eight or nine hours a
Speaker 1: day and you're always you're kind of always working, but
Speaker 1: you're actually without the commute to work and a whole
Speaker 1: range of other factors. You then still have hours to
Speaker 1: do other things. And some of the hobbies and the
Speaker 1: sessions we run down there, this is kind of delving
Speaker 1: into the depths of the story as well, but then
Speaker 1: use your professional development side of it. And we used
Speaker 1: to rhyme like some of the best stuff we do
Speaker 1: down there is every Wednesday night we'd run different talks,
Speaker 1: so and if you've never done public speaking before banging,
Speaker 1: there's a chance get up back yourself in. We'd run
Speaker 1: for group fitness classes, workshops, hobby heart sessions, building development,
Speaker 1: language things, music lessons, whatever it was. Everyone would learn
Speaker 1: from each other and do different things and it's a
Speaker 1: real unique thing. You probably even had this on your
Speaker 1: own Tarctic voyage. Like the talks and learning from those
Speaker 1: around you is so important and workplaces that value professional development,
Speaker 1: which I really enjoyed because one of the people that
Speaker 1: get in to come and talk about this effect. But
Speaker 1: the minute you go to a workplace that actually encourages
Speaker 1: that their ability retain people and keep them going, and
Speaker 1: people go, we don't have the budget to get in speakers,
Speaker 1: you like, use your own people, like, you don't need
Speaker 1: to go and higher. You know, you don't need expensive speakers,
Speaker 1: you don't even need anyone from outside. Use your own people,
Speaker 1: encourage them to develop and learn from each other, and
Speaker 1: you can just and you see the group come together,
Speaker 1: you see people backing each other up, and everyone then
Speaker 1: can can grow. Like I'm not good at public speaking,
Speaker 1: You're like, cool, Well, what better way to get better
Speaker 1: than to go start with a small group of people.
Speaker 1: You know, they'll help you out, they'll give you some pointers,
Speaker 1: it's a feedback or whatever it is, and you can
Speaker 1: you can grow and learn. So when you're going to
Speaker 1: get right back to your question, how do you know that?
Speaker 1: I think the minute you're questioning, like, all right, why
Speaker 1: am I doing this? You go and I think for me,
Speaker 1: at the end of my career in diplomacy, I was
Speaker 1: I've been in Iraq for about a year and a bit,
Speaker 1: you know, back and forth a lot of times, and
Speaker 1: I was looking at other people around me. I was
Speaker 1: tired of a lot of the complicated elements around what
Speaker 1: we're doing in Iraq. Fascinating at the start, but by
Speaker 1: the end you're like, this is pretty complicated. And I
Speaker 1: loved delving into the thousands of years of history of
Speaker 1: what on earth we were doing there and trying to
Speaker 1: explain that. I remember once trying to explain this to
Speaker 1: I was working with an ANZAC task group as well.
Speaker 1: This is newly a arrived group of Kiwis. I'd say,
Speaker 1: I was about to say little that they were not little,
Speaker 1: these units.
Speaker 2: Little baby soldiers exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: They're like, so, what's what's what's this all about? What
Speaker 1: are we doing here? From your point of it? And
Speaker 1: I'm like, right, cool, So let's go back, Like, first
Speaker 1: of all, we're going to go back one hundred years
Speaker 1: to the Sykes Peako Agreement, but then we're also going
Speaker 1: to go back to the Ottoman Empire.
Speaker 2: But then we're my god, sykes Peako, and you just go.
Speaker 1: And you're starting to go like all right, I'm kind
Speaker 1: of I'm sick of all this, let's do something else.
Speaker 1: And for me that was a shift away from diplomacy
Speaker 1: in war zones to the austral Antarctic Program and working
Speaker 1: on climate science. And now I'm not a scientist, as
Speaker 1: we established earlier, but the way I can help that
Speaker 1: is to get down there and and work around them
Speaker 1: and get them to where they need to go and
Speaker 1: be part of that, and then communicate it to others
Speaker 1: and tell everyone I can about some of the work
Speaker 1: that gets done down there and the importance of it
Speaker 1: and how we're trying to understand what's happening down in Antarctic.
Speaker 1: And that for me became the new renewed sense of like,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm good at logistics and operations and adventurous places,
Speaker 1: and I'm also good at understanding that nuances and complexity
Speaker 1: of government funded operations. So I'm like, great, let's just
Speaker 1: put all of that together and get down and work
Speaker 1: with And I've been down six times, i think in total,
Speaker 1: on various different voyages and expeditions. I'm heading back down
Speaker 1: this summer and I think after this trip that'll probably
Speaker 1: be it, and I'll be like, all right, let's if
Speaker 1: you've done a lot of Antarctic. I've been to all
Speaker 1: Australia stations. You've led teams, small teams, big teams, done
Speaker 1: some complicated stuff, written a book about it. Like I
Speaker 1: think I'm going, I'm gonna be ready for what's next.
Speaker 1: And again when you are, so I'm in that phase now,
Speaker 1: and you go, don't be to ration and try and
Speaker 1: latch onto something too quickly. Be content to sit back
Speaker 1: a bit and go all right, might have to wait
Speaker 1: and see what comes up. And again, you've got to
Speaker 1: pay the bills, so you might have to take some
Speaker 1: sort of backward step where you are, but be honest
Speaker 1: with yourself with that, go this isn't a great opportunity.
Speaker 1: This is this right. I need to make that amount
Speaker 1: of money a year to pay my mortgage, so I'll
Speaker 1: take that. But then that gives me four hours a
Speaker 1: day to do my side hustle. And then as that grows,
Speaker 1: I remember saying, like seeing a great thing. When I
Speaker 1: sort of transitioned to what I do now, I was like,
Speaker 1: don't quit your job to focus on your side hustle.
Speaker 1: Focus on your side hustle until you get fired. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I didn't get to that, but it gave me a
Speaker 1: good mindset of like, don't just quit everything and go right,
Speaker 1: I'm finished with that. I'm now going to be a
Speaker 1: podcaster and do this stuff. Start all of that in
Speaker 1: your spare time until you get to a point where
Speaker 1: you're starting to make money with your side hustle or
Speaker 1: your other job, and you go right, I could now
Speaker 1: turn off again. I'm using my hands too often for
Speaker 1: a podcast.
Speaker 2: No, I love it. But I also I love that
Speaker 2: you're like the perfect speaker for this entire show because
Speaker 2: everything is just slightly different wording on what I like
Speaker 2: hammer into people about the idea that you know, everyone's
Speaker 2: yay is a jigsaw puzzle, and you're always adding new
Speaker 2: pieces and getting rid of other pieces, and at some
Speaker 2: times your joy and your job overlap, at sometimes they don't.
Speaker 2: It's like, this is the reality. Pay the bills, do
Speaker 2: the stuff, and then but you find your joy elsewhere,
Speaker 2: and as long as the puzzle is kind of all
Speaker 2: somewhat balancing, it doesn't matter where you're getting that fulfillment
Speaker 2: as long as you're finding it somewhere. But I think
Speaker 2: the other part of that, when you're transitioning from one
Speaker 2: joy to the next is and I'm really interested to
Speaker 2: hear your answer on this, because this question varies a
Speaker 2: lot often between the genders, mass generalization, no scientific research
Speaker 2: behind this, but I'd love to know your view on
Speaker 2: the fact that when you are doing something that requires
Speaker 2: to us on the outside, is very obvious that your
Speaker 2: skills are transferable from diplomacy to Antarctic expeditions. But you've
Speaker 2: gone from somewhere where you're awarded service medals and defense
Speaker 2: medals and like very qualified and accomplished to like never
Speaker 2: been to Antarctica, had never Like I want to ask
Speaker 2: you also about how you become qualified. And I know
Speaker 2: the training and the testing was like extreme. How do
Speaker 2: you deal with like the doubt or imposter syndrome that
Speaker 2: creeps into your mind of like whoa I was like
Speaker 2: senior and now I'm junior and I don't know what
Speaker 2: I'm doing here and like this is a whole new world.
Speaker 2: Did you have.
Speaker 1: That that is not that is tough and that the
Speaker 1: older you get, the harder that becomes, Like how do
Speaker 1: I start again? How do I go from being an
Speaker 1: expert in your field to I've never been an Antarctic
Speaker 1: station leader, I've never been with the Australian program. Didn't know,
Speaker 1: and being humble in that is important, but also you'll
Speaker 1: quickly understand where you know. Your skill sets feed into that.
Speaker 1: Even if you're starting again, you're starting with a lot
Speaker 1: of experience from something hopefully similar and also also might
Speaker 1: be completely do And actually would just said about this
Speaker 1: before you going into being a parent, how on earth
Speaker 1: do you don't what to do? But you go, no,
Speaker 1: I've got a lifetime of experience of doing all sorts
Speaker 1: of other stuff that when you become a parent, you'd
Speaker 1: be like, oh great, it's just you know, organizing chaos
Speaker 1: twenty four hours a day and that's that. And you'll
Speaker 1: have done sleep deprivation when you're a teenager, and like
Speaker 1: all these things that you're now gonna have to do
Speaker 1: you can. You'll realize that everything in life is kind
Speaker 1: of the same, it's just the context will be different.
Speaker 1: So I think that that can be part of it.
Speaker 1: But for me, I was I was pretty humble going
Speaker 1: into the Antarctic program, and then now only a few
Speaker 1: years later, I've got quite a lot of experience. I
Speaker 1: still never think you've got a you've got the market
Speaker 1: cornered on experience and knowledge. There's still a lot you
Speaker 1: will never know. And if you ever think you know everything,
Speaker 1: you're kidding yourself and you need a realiz to check.
Speaker 1: Because even the most expert people in the world will
Speaker 1: scientists and stuff are probably some of the best examples
Speaker 1: of this. They will still go, oh, we don't understand this,
Speaker 1: or we don't know what's going on here, and they'll
Speaker 1: seek an answer and they'll try and learn and find
Speaker 1: a way. And that for me, is a way to
Speaker 1: approach any problem, especially when you're changing careers or you're
Speaker 1: changing lifestyle, changing locations. Is knowledge to spells. Fear is
Speaker 1: a great quote from this parachute training school, and I
Speaker 1: use that in so many different places. You guys, ye
Speaker 1: I don't know something, learn about it, you know. The
Speaker 1: more you can then learn and go, Okay, well I
Speaker 1: don't know anything about this particular topic. Let's learn and
Speaker 1: read everything, talk to others about it, and they make
Speaker 1: your own opinion. I think that's probably the more important
Speaker 1: one of still backing yourself to make your own decisions
Speaker 1: on the information you've got.
Speaker 2: Oh, I love that. And then having said that, reading
Speaker 2: the book about your five hundred and thirty seven days
Speaker 2: are being thrown into not just being a station leader,
Speaker 2: which was already foreign, but then not getting your reinforcements
Speaker 2: at particular times and the experts that you were meant
Speaker 2: to have on hand, and like, it just got even
Speaker 2: more chaotic. So I am so excited to enter the
Speaker 2: Antarctic chapter. Now, tell us, so you became station leader
Speaker 2: at the Devas Station from twenty nineteen to twenty twenty
Speaker 2: which ended up being over five hundred days because COVID
Speaker 2: the world changed and you couldn't get home. Can you
Speaker 2: first give us a lay of the land for people
Speaker 2: who have never been to Antarctica and don't know the
Speaker 2: layout sort of what the Australian stations are. Who else
Speaker 2: has stations around? Like how you got there? I've only
Speaker 2: ever shared it from a tourist perspective, which was obviously
Speaker 2: South America. We only did the peninsula. We stayed on
Speaker 2: a boat, there was no landing, whereas Davis is a station,
Speaker 2: it's in Antarctica and you're not on a boat the
Speaker 2: whole time. So first, just like lay out the logistics
Speaker 2: of it all and how you became the station leader
Speaker 2: so people understand kind of the context that the rest
Speaker 2: of the story comes out in all.
Speaker 1: Right, So twenty nineteen. I've left Marther, Korea, and I've
Speaker 1: decided to take a job as an Antarctic station leader.
Speaker 1: The Australian Antarctic Program manages our three continental Antarctic stations
Speaker 1: of Casey, Davis, and Mawson. Casey is pretty much due
Speaker 1: south of Hobart, maybe a little bit west, about four
Speaker 1: thousand kilometers away. Davis is a bit further west, maybe
Speaker 1: due south of kind of Perth ish and about five
Speaker 1: thousand k's away, and then Mawson is due south of
Speaker 1: Herd Island, which is off the coast of westerns Trail
Speaker 1: amount you six thousand sort of kilometers away. It takes
Speaker 1: two weeks to sail there on an ice breaking ship.
Speaker 1: You can fly to Casey if you're lucky in the
Speaker 1: weather windows, and then using smaller planes you can you
Speaker 1: can ferry between the stations, but only in the summertime,
Speaker 1: from kind of November through to sort of March April,
Speaker 1: it's the end of flying operations and even the ships.
Speaker 1: So what we do is to man those stations in
Speaker 1: the summer time. They'll have scientists in there and they
Speaker 1: might be up to Casey Davis about one hundred people
Speaker 1: at each station maybe a fifty to fifty split of
Speaker 1: science and operational support. But the core group on the
Speaker 1: stations is always the wintering team, which will be about
Speaker 1: twenty people give or take depending on what's going on
Speaker 1: for that particularly year. So twenty four of us went
Speaker 1: down on the Aurora Australis, which was the ice breaking ship.
Speaker 1: We left on twenty third of October twenty nineteen on
Speaker 1: a one year contract of like, right, you're going to
Speaker 1: go down for a year. You'll spend that first summer
Speaker 1: with one hundred odd scientists. Today you've got helicopters and
Speaker 1: small boats and it'll be all the things you wanted
Speaker 1: twenty four hours at daylight, hashtag and penguins, And honestly
Speaker 1: is that the leader in that situation is pretty straightforward.
Speaker 1: You've got maritime experts, aviation experts that just run everything
Speaker 1: for you and just sit back and go Maybe if
Speaker 1: we communicate better this week.
Speaker 2: Yes, let's take out with more penguins tomorrow.
Speaker 1: But when it got to March twenty twenty, so we're
Speaker 1: a few months in, the ship came back to pick
Speaker 1: up all the scientists and go home, and that was
Speaker 1: the last ever visit of the Aurora Australas ship to
Speaker 1: Antarctica because we were supposed to come home in November
Speaker 1: twenty twenty Australia on Australia's brand new icebreaker, the RSV Noiiner,
Speaker 1: which was being built in Romania, and there's gonna be
Speaker 1: fitted out in the Netherlands, commissioned and sail down and
Speaker 1: pick us up on its maiden voyage. And so we
Speaker 1: it's March twenty twenty. We're like, yep, no worries. We've
Speaker 1: heard about COVID. Everyone was still in this phase of like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: there'll be some travel restrictions and a little lockdown, you know,
Speaker 1: two weeks to flatten the curve, you know whatever flat curb.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, yeah PTSD exactly.
Speaker 1: So we're all we all just went okay, great, what
Speaker 1: a year to winter in Antarctica. And as a spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: as the year rolled on, it went from bad to
Speaker 1: worse in terms of yeah, we're the novelty phase when
Speaker 1: it was like people are calling us, going what do
Speaker 1: you do on the Antarctic stations during lockdowns? And we
Speaker 1: did these great little social media media video clips and
Speaker 1: we were all having a ball going on, this is great.
Speaker 1: We have plenty to do, but by midwinter, so we
Speaker 1: celebrate Midwinter's Day. It was is the winter solstice twenty
Speaker 1: first to June twenty twenty, and we celebrate that by
Speaker 1: doing a very formal dinner. But we also go for
Speaker 1: a swim. So at the time it's minus twenty two
Speaker 1: degrees outside on that particular day, ocean's two meters snick
Speaker 1: of sea ice. You've got to cut a hole in
Speaker 1: the ice. You with a little pool, not at the
Speaker 1: same time. One at a time. You jump in for
Speaker 1: up to a minute. I think I'll last about twenty seconds,
Speaker 1: and you go swim around a bit, get out and go, wow,
Speaker 1: what a cool stupid thing we've done, is go swimming
Speaker 1: in the middle of Antarctic winter. And for us, even
Speaker 1: though that's the midwinter's halfway point, for us, it was
Speaker 1: actually two thirds of the way through our journey. We
Speaker 1: was supposed to come home a couple of months after that.
Speaker 1: So for us, we're like, great, let's see it after this.
Speaker 1: You know, you get twenty fo hours of darkness at
Speaker 1: that time as well, you go all right every day
Speaker 1: after this to be seven more minutes of daylight and
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty odd days later we'll be coming home.
Speaker 1: Yet two days after that swim and the dinner, twenty
Speaker 1: third of June twenty twenty was when we were told
Speaker 1: was I was told first by the operations managers like look, Dave,
Speaker 1: the new ship the dockyard in Romania's shut down. It's
Speaker 1: not going to be finished in twenty twenty, probably not
Speaker 1: even twenty twenty one. So there's no ship there. We
Speaker 1: can't use the old ship that's been on sold to
Speaker 1: a different company. Australia doesn't own it anymore. You can't
Speaker 1: come home that way. We can't do the aviational link
Speaker 1: because all the planes we used to ferry around the stations,
Speaker 1: all those planes are stuck in North America and can't
Speaker 1: get through Central America because of the COVID lockdowns. And
Speaker 1: we have a lot of great relationships with the partner nations,
Speaker 1: and namely the French, the Italians, the Americans, the Japanese,
Speaker 1: the Chinese, the Indians, the Russians, who all have stations
Speaker 1: in and around Australias. We normally share a lot of logistics.
Speaker 1: We share flights, We pill cargo on different ships, put people
Speaker 1: on different ships at times, and move around. They were
Speaker 1: like because of COVID. No one's cooperating. It's just bang
Speaker 1: every man for themselves or every nation on their own.
Speaker 1: And we were stuck in this weird sixty year swing
Speaker 1: where we'd had one ice breaker for thirty years, we're
Speaker 1: due to have a new ice breaker commission for thirty years,
Speaker 1: and the one year in between those two ice breakers
Speaker 1: was COVID and the year we were.
Speaker 2: There, what are the chances the boat would be scheduled
Speaker 2: for renewal that year?
Speaker 1: Oh, and look, there's so many variables in that. And
Speaker 1: people go, but you know, why didn't they have a
Speaker 1: better transition period, and you go, well, obviously, but in
Speaker 1: so many ways they didn't need to worry about that
Speaker 1: as much because they knew, well, okay, if the ship's late,
Speaker 1: we can fly everyone in and out, and then we
Speaker 1: can use we can borrow the French will do a
Speaker 1: voyage for us, and we can share logistics with the Chinese,
Speaker 1: or we can charter another ship, or we could do
Speaker 1: something in a normal year. But when it was twenty
Speaker 1: twenty in the COVID year, none of that was available.
Speaker 1: So the program did have levels of redundancy to deal
Speaker 1: with any one of those incidents or even two of
Speaker 1: those incidents, but when you had all of them multiple, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was kind of crazy because they had
Speaker 1: to have we have and any of your corporate listeners
Speaker 1: and others will know these structures like your emergency business
Speaker 1: continuity plans and your incident management groups and teams. We
Speaker 1: ended up like we had the Umbrella Incident Management team
Speaker 1: of COVID and then you had all these other sub
Speaker 1: incident groups and it just started to get and I'm
Speaker 1: sure businesses had this is well, you're going geez. We
Speaker 1: planned on okay, that's how we set up for one incident,
Speaker 1: but no one had ever thought that'd be incidents within
Speaker 1: the incidents that require different breakout groups and you're just
Speaker 1: trying to manage that and navigate it. And for us,
Speaker 1: in so many ways though, there was a simplicity to
Speaker 1: being stuck on an Antarctic station. It's twenty four of us.
Speaker 1: We had two years worth of food and fuel and
Speaker 1: for some reason, five years of toilet paper, which makes
Speaker 1: no sense.
Speaker 2: Oh, you were the reason why Australia had the toilet
Speaker 2: paper shortage because it was all in bloody Antarctic with
Speaker 2: you guys.
Speaker 1: You can't eat it though, well, have you tried. I'm
Speaker 1: sure people were given the rate it was selling back here,
Speaker 1: but anyway, so that had a simplicity of like, great,
Speaker 1: we were stuck here, and we knew we'd be there
Speaker 1: into sometime into twenty twenty one, and that we went around.
Speaker 1: We were involved in some of the planning and thinking around,
Speaker 1: well what are the options, but largely it was left
Speaker 1: to our bosses back in Hobart to go, We'll come
Speaker 1: up with a plan how to get a different ship
Speaker 1: or a different aircraft or whatever. And part of our
Speaker 1: mind was prepared for staying another winter and an entire
Speaker 1: other year, which would have got pretty interesting. If I've said,
Speaker 1: you know, the book at the moments called Fire and
Speaker 1: thirty seven Days of Winter, I'm like, if it'd have
Speaker 1: gone another year, the book would be like a thousand
Speaker 1: days of mutiny, mayhem and cho of hell. It would
Speaker 1: have got pretty messy. But or it would have been fine.
Speaker 1: Like it was a great team, and I know we
Speaker 1: all had ups and downs along the way, yet by
Speaker 1: and large you came back as professional colleagues with a
Speaker 1: very interesting shared experience and that we would have otherwise
Speaker 1: never met. And one of the kind of interesting things
Speaker 1: I think your listeners would appreciate, though, was the ability
Speaker 1: for not just myself but the entire team to reframe
Speaker 1: that's almost straight away and go, Okay, we signed up
Speaker 1: for an Antarctic adventure for a year. We've now been
Speaker 1: told that's going to be a year and a half,
Speaker 1: and it has a whole other way of uncertainty of well,
Speaker 1: what does home even look like? Not just you're there longer,
Speaker 1: but also when you get home it's going to be weird.
Speaker 1: But everyone was really able to just go, oh, let's
Speaker 1: make the most of this. There's some really unique elements too.
Speaker 1: We've got to do a lot more science in that
Speaker 1: second somewhere because there weren't all the other scientists down
Speaker 1: there to help out and do what they would normally do,
Speaker 1: so we got to jump in and do some of that.
Speaker 1: We're able to give the group more freedom on account
Speaker 1: of Okay, ordinarily, and you would have found this with
Speaker 1: your trip. You know, you're fairly controlled. You can do this.
Speaker 1: You can't do that. You've got to go out in
Speaker 1: pairs and take this equipment and take these things. But
Speaker 1: when I was able to say, well, actually everyone's been
Speaker 1: here for a year, they know what they're doing. We
Speaker 1: can change the way we interpret some of these regulations
Speaker 1: to give so rather than people having to come and
Speaker 1: ask me for oh, can we go and do this,
Speaker 1: and be like, well, you know the conditions, you know
Speaker 1: the equipment required.
Speaker 2: Just go for a walk.
Speaker 1: You need to tell someone and you need to take
Speaker 1: the communication strategies so if you've got a problem, but
Speaker 1: you don't have to come and find me. And that
Speaker 1: giving people more autonomy and control was really important, and
Speaker 1: letting them get out and about and make their own
Speaker 1: fun and make the most of that unique opportunity because
Speaker 1: for so many people that's their one trip to Antarctica.
Speaker 1: You do your winter. It's the only winter I've done.
Speaker 1: I've done multiple other summer trips, but winters are rarer.
Speaker 1: Some people do, you know, dozens of them, but it's
Speaker 1: pretty rare, and I think that's something that you can go.
Speaker 1: There's always a uniqueness to whatever situation you're in, especially
Speaker 1: when it's hard, and that was something that got me
Speaker 1: through it. Of Hey, you wanted an Antarctic challenge, you
Speaker 1: wanted to be a station leader. If it had gone
Speaker 1: to plan and been a normal year, it would have
Speaker 1: been interesting, but jeez, it wouldn't have been everything that
Speaker 1: it became. And as it went from bad to worse,
Speaker 1: and all of the things that came up along the way,
Speaker 1: none of them were unique. They'd all happened before, and
Speaker 1: all happened again. That never all happened in one year.
Speaker 1: And that's what became really really bizarre. That when we
Speaker 1: were standing there trying to do a couple of other
Speaker 1: members of the team to just go and there's a
Speaker 1: great quote I think in the book around that of
Speaker 1: just like, well, besides the pandemic, besides this, and besides that, like,
Speaker 1: oh what else could be wrong? And it was just
Speaker 1: a funny moment to list everything that had happened, what.
Speaker 2: We coped with that through that well, before we get
Speaker 2: to some of the more colorful moments and how you
Speaker 2: got through them. I think I loved it as an
Speaker 2: Antarctica lover but also someone who finds human nature and
Speaker 2: behavior fascinating and then how that leads to leadership. I mean,
Speaker 2: your experience was like an extreme, like microcosm example of
Speaker 2: leadership everywhere, except that you also became like a mother
Speaker 2: and an emergency services coordinator, the main doctor, the main
Speaker 2: like you were making calls on everything but there were
Speaker 2: so many lessons to pull out of that in the
Speaker 2: tougher moments, but just before we get to when it
Speaker 2: got difficult. What I found so interesting about Antarctica is
Speaker 2: not only that any rules of life just go out
Speaker 2: the window because talk about humility and Doubtaca humbles you
Speaker 2: as a human, like nature doesn't care what you want
Speaker 2: to do. You're visiting there and it will just ruin
Speaker 2: any plans that you have. But also the conditions you
Speaker 2: live under, like what's normal in Antarctica is so different.
Speaker 2: So you had Wi Fi, but it was patchy. Your
Speaker 2: sunlight in summer is constant, your darkness in winter is constant.
Speaker 2: Like what was your day to day life, what did
Speaker 2: you have access to? And also the fact that when
Speaker 2: you're you said you were working all the time. You're
Speaker 2: living with your colleagues, so that in itself is like
Speaker 2: you get no escape from each other. You do have downtime,
Speaker 2: but everyone, including scientists, would have to get involved in
Speaker 2: some of the water plumbing activities because you're just all
Speaker 2: there to make it work for everyone, and that's not
Speaker 2: normal in human life. So can you explain some more
Speaker 2: of the logistics of living, like how you you know,
Speaker 2: did you have a doctor there all the time?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Did was there a gym? Like? What was life like?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So life's actually pretty good when you look at it,
Speaker 1: especially the Australian stations. It'll have been about a dozen
Speaker 1: other national stations as well. They were pretty much the
Speaker 1: same and they'll all have different pros and cons. So,
Speaker 1: and the previous director of the Istralian program used to
Speaker 1: describe them a ski resorts. I'm like, yeah, but if
Speaker 1: you spend a year and a half with your twenty
Speaker 1: four best mates on a ski resort, it's not all sunshine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, there's there's a gym, there's a sauna, there's
Speaker 1: a hot tub, there's a library, there's a cinema, there's
Speaker 1: a bar, there's a kitchen. Everyone gets their own room
Speaker 1: on the AUSSY stations as long as you're there for
Speaker 1: more than a couple of weeks. Sometimes we have to
Speaker 1: share during resupplies and really busy times, but or less,
Speaker 1: you get your own room way for thin walls. So
Speaker 1: if you you know, it's not pretty good, but you're
Speaker 1: absolutely right. The worst part about it is that there's
Speaker 1: there's really little privacy, even if you are locked in
Speaker 1: your own room and you've shut the door and you're
Speaker 1: trying to watch a movie or nap during the day
Speaker 1: or whatever it is, someone will slam a door or
Speaker 1: cough loudly or snore or fart or my room was
Speaker 1: really close to wear.
Speaker 2: Haircuts, Oh my god, haircuts, of course.
Speaker 1: So we had one guy that even did a great job,
Speaker 1: and a couple of girls in the team as well,
Speaker 1: and he did. One of them had really long, curly
Speaker 1: hair and the hair dress. He was one of the mechanics.
Speaker 1: He did a great job one day where they just
Speaker 1: parked in the bar, set up, the whole barbershop set up,
Speaker 1: and he just he'd watched a few YouTube clips on
Speaker 1: how to do women's hair, and off he went. Then
Speaker 1: it did an amazing job. So there was some of
Speaker 1: those things that, Yeah, I mean, if you look at
Speaker 1: the photos of me at the end of the year
Speaker 1: and a half, pretty that's the longest hair i'd had
Speaker 1: a long walt and a lot of people got some
Speaker 1: pretty interesting twenty twenty eight ish haircuts, I think. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the photo of me at the airport.
Speaker 2: The photo section in the middle of the book is
Speaker 2: my favorite, I know, with your fancy shirt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the fancy shirt, which was a lot darker blue
Speaker 1: at the start of the year, not the faded blue
Speaker 1: bother you and a half. So you have to do
Speaker 1: all those things yourself. And yeah, there's there's one doctor,
Speaker 1: and then there's there's one builder, and there's a couple
Speaker 1: of builders actually, and then your builders, electronics technicians and
Speaker 1: engineers and meteorologists and all. Everyone's got their job. And
Speaker 1: I used to say as well, and the best way
Speaker 1: to approach it is, yes, you've got job, and if
Speaker 1: your hierarchy of work, but socially and there's a community,
Speaker 1: everyone's equal. It doesn't matter like everyone. There's a roster
Speaker 1: for it that you know, I do the roster. But
Speaker 1: if really you could, anyone could do it. It's just
Speaker 1: it just repeats and you've got to shuffle. So at
Speaker 1: any point, you've got six people that are on the
Speaker 1: fire team and the emergency response team, so that if
Speaker 1: anything goes wrong, they can man the fire hoses because
Speaker 1: then we do some great firefighter training before we leave,
Speaker 1: which is really cool. There's surgical assistance, so to help
Speaker 1: the one doctor, four people are trained as surgical assistant,
Speaker 1: so they spend two weeks in the er and Hobart
Speaker 1: doing everything from like delivering babies to car accidents, and
Speaker 1: also just as the assistant, so they get probably I
Speaker 1: think some of the coolest, most unique. You can't just say, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: I want to go spend two weeks in the er
Speaker 1: as a scrubbed in surgical assistant any other hospitality to
Speaker 1: get stuck.
Speaker 2: Unless you're going to Antarctica.
Speaker 1: Unless you go to Antarctica or a nursing student or something.
Speaker 1: So that that's pretty cool, and because if anything happens,
Speaker 1: and all this stuff happened, it's it's just you that
Speaker 1: people have to then help out at one point when
Speaker 1: none of them are available. I actually helped have to
Speaker 1: suiture some dude's head. He just banged his head on
Speaker 1: a staircase and I was and the doctor saw it happen.
Speaker 1: He's like, oh what are you doing. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: not much, and he's like it just gives a hand.
Speaker 1: And so he's just in there with your gloves on
Speaker 1: holding skin together while he's stitching, and you're going, this
Speaker 1: is this is unreal because there's that's it. It's it's
Speaker 1: just your team.
Speaker 2: That's human agility right there.
Speaker 1: And it's so fascinating learning all those the other one,
Speaker 1: the one I really love about. I say, this is
Speaker 1: a look out the window, it's a nice blue sky day.
Speaker 1: Is really becoming quite in tune with nature and the
Speaker 1: conditions that now, if it's a beautiful day back here,
Speaker 1: my ability to stay inside and do any work, I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: I've got to go for a walk over running and
Speaker 1: to do stuff like got to get out and about.
Speaker 1: And then on a rainy day, I'm like, great blizz day,
Speaker 1: today's the day you work. And now that works better
Speaker 1: Arountarctica because it's sort of works since sort of these
Speaker 1: three day swings give or take, but it means you'll
Speaker 1: get a good balance done. The problem is Australia has
Speaker 1: generally pretty good weather, so it can be tough. But
Speaker 1: I think that's something I think in the modern world
Speaker 1: where not very in tune with nature, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter what the conditions are, because we've created a society
Speaker 1: and buildings and infrastructure and everything to mean that we
Speaker 1: can deal with it. And yet you go and chat
Speaker 1: to Norwegians and Canadians, they're very in tune with the
Speaker 1: weather and the conditions because over there they have to
Speaker 1: still deal with it. But for us, it's a bit different,
Speaker 1: and that's one of my favorite takeaways is all those
Speaker 1: little soft skills and community things that you don't have
Speaker 1: to do back here, but we have to do down there.
Speaker 2: I feel like, even in just such a short time
Speaker 2: that we were there, you can't ignore, especially because we
Speaker 2: went with Intrepid and their becore certification meant there were
Speaker 2: so many scientists on board, and the sessions are amazing.
Speaker 2: They make it without shoving it down your throat. They
Speaker 2: make it impossible for you to visit without appreciating the
Speaker 2: enormal of nature there, which then makes you reflect on
Speaker 2: the normality of nature everywhere. You just block it out
Speaker 2: when you're back home, but having to see how nature
Speaker 2: is just like in its most pristine, untouched by humans,
Speaker 2: and how you're just at the mercy of weather like
Speaker 2: it's literally there's nothing you can do. Someone's having a
Speaker 2: heart attack, you can't fly. If you can't fly, you
Speaker 2: can't fly like you just can't get them there. It's
Speaker 2: a modern science has absolutely no strength compared to Mother Nature,
Speaker 2: and it changes the way you think about everything. It's
Speaker 2: so interesting.
Speaker 1: I think even things around like rubbish and sustainability and recycling,
Speaker 1: like for us we're pretty very environmentally conscious down there
Speaker 1: and have really strict rules around all these things. You
Speaker 1: can't take polystyrene and you're doing all these different things,
Speaker 1: and you can't use certain types of hair products and
Speaker 1: soaps because they're bad for the water set. And we
Speaker 1: treat all the water and like the water that does
Speaker 1: get discharged is drinking level quality, et cetera. That goes
Speaker 1: back out into the ocean, and we just desalinate water
Speaker 1: and all sorts of different things or will melt ice
Speaker 1: to get it. So you your water is actually coming
Speaker 1: from diesel because you're like, well, it's either frozen or salty,
Speaker 1: so we've got to either decalerate or melt it, and
Speaker 1: that's going to cost diesel. So if you're showering, imagine
Speaker 1: yourself showering and diesel, because if you have a long shower,
Speaker 1: you're just burning more fossil fuels to do that. And
Speaker 1: even then the recycling, like when you be on rubbish study,
Speaker 1: which every other week or something, you probably in a
Speaker 1: rubbis studio every day you go, oh, it turns out
Speaker 1: and you just realize how much rubbish twenty four people
Speaker 1: are accumulating and how we deal with that in terms
Speaker 1: of cycling, recycling some of it and do you have
Speaker 1: to incinerate other bits and incinerate human waste from the
Speaker 1: field and different things you kind of and you look
Speaker 1: at how much that's you know, that's twenty four people.
Speaker 1: If more people back home realize what happens when you
Speaker 1: put stuff in your bin and where it goes. And
Speaker 1: I think there's a great SBS thing on this now
Speaker 1: as well, like the war on trash or whatever one
Speaker 1: of the chaser guys some of that of looking at
Speaker 1: the chain of what happens to all this and like
Speaker 1: massive hate but beyond a pet hate now just again
Speaker 1: like the amount of freaking packaging and everything, and just
Speaker 1: look at it and go, why is all this stuff
Speaker 1: individually wrapped? And I make a real good point of
Speaker 1: my Hessian bags and everything at the supermarket, like never
Speaker 1: using the other ones to like put all your other
Speaker 1: fruits together. And I think the woman and all the
Speaker 1: check out people at the market I go to, they
Speaker 1: look at.
Speaker 3: Like individual like everything which is the chaos that has
Speaker 3: to go in a Hessian bag and it all rolls
Speaker 3: off the thing like no.
Speaker 1: But you go, I just I can. I don't want
Speaker 1: to use any bags unless I absolutely have to use
Speaker 1: a plastic bag or something. And so that stuff becomes
Speaker 1: really because you have to see it and you have
Speaker 1: to deal with it. So you go, I need I
Speaker 1: want to create less rubbish because I'm going to have
Speaker 1: to deal with the rubbish or I'm going to have
Speaker 1: to carry the rubbish walking around with me. So before
Speaker 1: you go out, the armies, good at this. Taking me
Speaker 1: this as well, Like, don't take anything into the field
Speaker 1: because you've got to carry.
Speaker 2: It for the rest of the ever.
Speaker 1: People cut their toothbrushes in half. That's an It's just
Speaker 1: like yeah, right, But.
Speaker 2: I actually love that. It makes you think in a
Speaker 2: way that like you can easily ignore where things go,
Speaker 2: but when you're in Antarctica, you can't because like you
Speaker 2: see where it goes, like there's nowhere for it to
Speaker 2: go because you live in a station and like you're
Speaker 2: trying to keep your footprint small, and I feel like
Speaker 2: you just you have to confront that. I think we
Speaker 2: get so accustomed to thinking we're so advanced as a
Speaker 2: human race that we're like, there's a way we can
Speaker 2: solve everything. But then I feel like in Antarctica, every
Speaker 2: problem you had was like like sometimes there's just no solution,
Speaker 2: Like humans can't outthink the fact that there's a blizzard
Speaker 2: and I'm stuck at in the hut that's far away
Speaker 2: from where I'm meant to be, but I can't get back,
Speaker 2: So I just have to wait three days with this
Speaker 2: one dude with a puzzle, and that's just what I'm
Speaker 2: going to have to do. And I think it that's
Speaker 2: so interesting because in our daily life back here, you're
Speaker 2: never forced into discomfort like that. So what were some
Speaker 2: of your toughest moments in that five hundred and thirty
Speaker 2: seven days and then some of the coolest examples of
Speaker 2: humanity that came out of it?
Speaker 1: Well, I think the story was talking about it is
Speaker 1: the story in the book. Or we get stuck in
Speaker 1: one of the field huts, which I mean a lot
Speaker 1: of ways were safe. Because we were stuck in a hut.
Speaker 1: It was just me and one other guy, and we
Speaker 1: hadn't planned on it, so we didn't have We had
Speaker 1: enough like the huts of stock with food and supplies,
Speaker 1: but I didn't have I didn't have like my headphones,
Speaker 1: I didn't have a book that I was reading, so
Speaker 1: I was just stuck with Right, what have we got
Speaker 1: in this hut and it was it was blowing like
Speaker 1: one hundred kilometers an hour winds outside for a good
Speaker 1: few days, so we just couldn't go outside. The only
Speaker 1: job outside we had was every few hours one of
Speaker 1: us would like open the door and shovel the doorway clear,
Speaker 1: so we knew that we could still get out, and
Speaker 1: that was great because you're cool. And we started to
Speaker 1: have a problem with the amount of waste and human
Speaker 1: wasts we were accumulating.
Speaker 2: In the hut.
Speaker 1: In the hut, which was getting it. We're like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is getting interesting. Don't drink too much, but I
Speaker 1: drink just enough. And then it'd be like, get really
Speaker 1: excited because I've got a cook dinner today and you
Speaker 1: started cooking it one day. You start at five o'clock,
Speaker 1: then you start at four thirty. Is that at four
Speaker 1: and started.
Speaker 2: Three clutching at straws here, paper straws.
Speaker 1: Obviously, yeah, exactly, you've got nothing else to do. So
Speaker 1: that was but I think that was a really cool moment,
Speaker 1: and he and I both agreed later that and even
Speaker 1: at the time, we're like, well, it's always been on
Speaker 1: our Antarctic bucket list, like get stuck at a field
Speaker 1: hut away from station for an extended period of time.
Speaker 1: So it was kind of cool.
Speaker 2: That was a new bucket list to get stuck.
Speaker 1: I think. So, I think it's a good one of
Speaker 1: like it was. You know, we had no Wi Fi.
Speaker 1: We only had we had a VHF radio back to
Speaker 1: station was our only means of communication. And yeah, we're
Speaker 1: probably only probably thirty or forty ks away, but we
Speaker 1: may as well have been hundreds of k's away. With that,
Speaker 1: the weather meant we just couldn't couldn't go anywhere, and
Speaker 1: that was That's not a low point. That was a
Speaker 1: tough time. I think when that happened as well, that
Speaker 1: was right around our extension. We've been there for a year,
Speaker 1: and that period of time the toughest. So we'd had
Speaker 1: members of the group that had decided yep, I'm not
Speaker 1: dealing with this well, and they were wavering, and I
Speaker 1: felt the group was fracturing at that point where it
Speaker 1: always had different like not necessarily clicks, but different just groups,
Speaker 1: you know, very different bunch of people, so you have
Speaker 1: very different conversations, and I felt at that point people
Speaker 1: were kind of sick of trying to make it all work.
Speaker 1: And they're like, you know what, I got my four friends.
Speaker 1: I'll get along with everyone, but I don't care anymore.
Speaker 1: Like everyone had lost like motivation to motivation, and we
Speaker 1: dealt with that a couple of ways. We got everyone
Speaker 1: together and did a kind of wellness week where we
Speaker 1: took some reduced work hours and were able to prioritize
Speaker 1: some field trips and learn from each other again of hey,
Speaker 1: what strategies are you using because stuff that we were
Speaker 1: using a year before didn't work, and as a community,
Speaker 1: to acknowledge that we're all struggling in our own way
Speaker 1: and we're all in the same boat, that became important.
Speaker 1: But it didn't work for everyone. And I think at
Speaker 1: moments there were people that I'm like, oh, this would
Speaker 1: be great for you know, Sarah to do this thisvity
Speaker 1: and then of course you're not going to turn up
Speaker 1: to an activity because you don't want to do it,
Speaker 1: so you just go and I'm like, oh, man, in
Speaker 1: the first half, people would always turn up to everything,
Speaker 1: And then you know, by that point you're running an
Speaker 1: event or you're running a professional development session and you're
Speaker 1: getting like two attendees, You're like, OK, what's everyone doing?
Speaker 1: And yet and also once we were able to then
Speaker 1: just just get through that lull and know that the
Speaker 1: lull at all end, it was always going to be
Speaker 1: a really tough time that anniversary when we still kind
Speaker 1: of had months to go and we didn't quite know
Speaker 1: exactly what the end was going to look like. And
Speaker 1: I was trying to get some answers and some definitive
Speaker 1: advice on what does the end look like, what does
Speaker 1: home look like, and what is the end going to
Speaker 1: be like? So we've got something to horizon to swim too,
Speaker 1: as they call it. That wasn't the solution to everything though,
Speaker 1: It was just you had to just ride that lull.
Speaker 1: And then there was a great moment where we ran
Speaker 1: an art show. So in the first summer, we'd run
Speaker 1: an art show the first year, and then we did
Speaker 1: it almost on the word new anniversary in that second summer,
Speaker 1: and for me that was a bit of a turning
Speaker 1: point where everyone had then got these projects and there
Speaker 1: were some great then memorabilia of our year and some
Speaker 1: amazing watercolor of the station, and we had framed photos
Speaker 1: of everyone on the field trips and the team team
Speaker 1: photo and framed flags and cool mementos of everything. We've done,
Speaker 1: and I think from that kind of moment people started
Speaker 1: to go, this is pretty special, this is pretty interesting,
Speaker 1: and it will end and we'll get home. That was
Speaker 1: a low point, and I think you always have to
Speaker 1: just admit that you'll always have your low points, and
Speaker 1: then it can be quite empowering to go all right,
Speaker 1: that's what rock Bottom was. Cool's let's find a way
Speaker 1: up from there, and don't be afraid of failing or
Speaker 1: feeling like you're struggling, because that's the human experience and
Speaker 1: you'll learn from it and you'll be better.
Speaker 2: It was so interesting because even in our show, I
Speaker 2: think it was twelve days or something, including our Drake
Speaker 2: Passage sailing, there were moments where, for absolutely no reason,
Speaker 2: like we had really good we had a really rough
Speaker 2: drap pass it on the way back, but really smooth
Speaker 2: on the way over, and still nothing, No one was
Speaker 2: in actual danger. I still had moments where I was
Speaker 2: so remote, just your brain getting used to it all,
Speaker 2: where I was like, I'm going to die, like this
Speaker 2: is really scary and I can't come home, let alone.
Speaker 2: If I was in winter when there's no light, you're
Speaker 2: just not used to that. And as an Australian. We
Speaker 2: just never have that. And then you're stuck, literally stuck
Speaker 2: being told you can't come home, Like I can't imagine.
Speaker 2: Did you have fear around that of like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: like I'm almost like claustrophobia even though you're in a
Speaker 2: big space.
Speaker 1: I never had any fears or doubts that we wouldn't
Speaker 1: make it through. Yeah, okay, it was around what's this
Speaker 1: going to look like at the end. Yeah, my one
Speaker 1: goal and the goal of everyone was get everyone home
Speaker 1: safely just became the goal. And besides all the other
Speaker 1: scientific research, all that other stuff, it's just get everyone
Speaker 1: home safely. That's it. That's the bar. If you achieve that,
Speaker 1: you've done your job. You've done your job. It's not
Speaker 1: going to be pretty. You're not all going to be
Speaker 1: friends at the end of it. And I had to
Speaker 1: give up on that and that as a leader. That's
Speaker 1: something I think you asked a little bit earlier about
Speaker 1: imposter syndrome, some of those things as a leader, making
Speaker 1: my peace with being unpopular or just not being able.
Speaker 2: To everyone to love you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a moment years ago. You know what,
Speaker 1: You're just not going to achieve that anymore let it
Speaker 1: go and I could have maybe a better leader could
Speaker 1: have done it better and all come home as absolute
Speaker 1: best friends. But I just I felt that wasn't at
Speaker 1: all got to be and accepting that and going but
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter if you get everyone home, get everyone
Speaker 1: home safely, and most pretty much everyone's still in touch
Speaker 1: in some way.
Speaker 2: Oh that's so nice.
Speaker 1: And more than half the group have actually either been
Speaker 1: back or still involved in the Antarctic program in some way.
Speaker 1: So I think that was testament to that. As tough
Speaker 1: as it was for everyone, when more than half the group.
Speaker 2: Are voluntarily going back there, it wasn't that bad.
Speaker 1: And so that was that was part of it that
Speaker 1: helps you get through just the darkness of like, all right,
Speaker 1: this is this is so I wasn't fearful. I was
Speaker 1: worried at times about what like reintegrating home. That became
Speaker 1: a worry of far out what do we all do
Speaker 1: after this? We'd all signed up to go away for
Speaker 1: a year, but you know, a year and a half change,
Speaker 1: and you kind of then you rebuild your comfort zone.
Speaker 1: So then you've got that Stockholm syndrome of and you know,
Speaker 1: how do I now reintegrate into the world, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people went out of the group, went back
Speaker 1: and changed careers. And you'd argue that when you've signed
Speaker 1: up for a year in our tart, your other career
Speaker 1: probably wasn't.
Speaker 2: Your top priority.
Speaker 1: You probably has pretty good stats that you're going to
Speaker 1: change careers. But for me, it was that was a
Speaker 1: daunting experience of what am I going to do when
Speaker 1: I get home? Do I want to go back to
Speaker 1: what I was doing? Do I want to work with
Speaker 1: the entireic program more? And that that becomes a challenge,
Speaker 1: and I probably am a bit of a day dream
Speaker 1: and I think that'll always help you get through your
Speaker 1: dark moments and your fears of going well, well, yeap,
Speaker 1: crossing the drake passage on a rough day, that's that's
Speaker 1: pretty yeah, I've done that, and yeah, you're right, you
Speaker 1: go geez if if something is wrong with the.
Speaker 2: Boat we are rolling, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember that I did it on a sixty three
Speaker 1: foot yacht. We were like and the change to the
Speaker 1: captain about him like, well, what happens if someone goes
Speaker 1: overboard here? He's like, He's like, you're gone, mate? Is
Speaker 1: a my ability to even turn the yacht around? He's
Speaker 1: like would compromise the whole yacht. So well, we'll throw
Speaker 1: you a life ring and hope you drift.
Speaker 2: North, hope for the best. Well, then this is the thing,
Speaker 2: like you're reading the book was so interesting because you're
Speaker 2: reading it as a participant in this experience, but also
Speaker 2: through the person who is the leader of that experience.
Speaker 2: So and in Antargaga, it's so unique because you're like
Speaker 2: the legal leader as well. You're not just on a
Speaker 2: school camp where you're kind of in charge nominally, but
Speaker 2: then there's like the police, and then there's like the government.
Speaker 2: You're in this like ungoverned territory that doesn't belong to anyone,
Speaker 2: where you literally are making big legal calls at a
Speaker 2: time when there's no precedent for this. Like you're the
Speaker 2: messenger for all the shit news as well, And then
Speaker 2: you can't be best friends with everyone because like that
Speaker 2: dude who just quit halfway through and was like, I'm
Speaker 2: stuck here, but I'm quitting. The fact that you came
Speaker 2: out at the end and people have wanted to go
Speaker 2: back is a huge testament to your ability to lead,
Speaker 2: which is incredible. But I love that you brought up
Speaker 2: the idea of reintegration because I again on like the
Speaker 2: smallest level after twelve days of pure simplicity, like the
Speaker 2: basics of life, no Wi Fi. We didn't have Wi
Speaker 2: Fi at all, the starlink wasn't working, and just immersion
Speaker 2: in nature and waking up with light and going to
Speaker 2: sleep with dark and eating when like, just everything was
Speaker 2: so basic and simple in a complicated way, but blocking
Speaker 2: out the rest of the noise of the world. I
Speaker 2: did not like coming back. I was like, I just
Speaker 2: want to go back and live on a ship and
Speaker 2: live in Antarctic.
Speaker 1: Or and just be nature and the simple life. You
Speaker 1: don't need all of the stuff we create around ourselves here.
Speaker 1: You start to go, I don't need that.
Speaker 2: Was it hard for you to come home? Then?
Speaker 1: It was really the hardest part coming home, I found
Speaker 1: was telling the story, understanding what on Earth had gone on,
Speaker 1: And that was weird. Everyone had this idea of like, oh, geez,
Speaker 1: you were lucky you missed out on twenty twenty. You know,
Speaker 1: you were stuck in Antarctica, Like what, And I'm like,
Speaker 1: do you have any idea? It's pretty rough down there, man.
Speaker 1: But I also then realized it's about people's perception. So
Speaker 1: there were some people never I never ever discount how
Speaker 1: hard it was for people to get through the last
Speaker 1: couple of years of COVID, but even just get through life.
Speaker 1: Like everyone's struggle in their own everyone's their own first
Speaker 1: person narrative, and some people's struggles are just insane for
Speaker 1: a whole range of reasons. And so you see this
Speaker 1: a bit around PTSD. It's not just someone that was
Speaker 1: in the middle of the last days of carble and
Speaker 1: fighting over the walls to get to plane and getting
Speaker 1: shot into. Yeah, that's probably going to put you on
Speaker 1: the spectrum, but there can be a whole range of
Speaker 1: other things that can give you elements of trauma and
Speaker 1: that you don't realize. And that's when trauma can really
Speaker 1: hurt you, as if you haven't acknowledged it and realized it.
Speaker 1: So for me, when I got back, understanding what had
Speaker 1: happened back here was tough, but taking some time to
Speaker 1: myself to just almost lock myself in my cave, run
Speaker 1: about my house and not socialize and not really get
Speaker 1: out there. And it took a few months to really
Speaker 1: really make the decision and start putting pen to paper
Speaker 1: with the book. And when it I had a couple
Speaker 1: of publishers chasing me, and I knew I was on
Speaker 1: a story that was that was going to get a
Speaker 1: book deal, which was quite empowering me. Like, Okay, great,
Speaker 1: I'll get it. I'll get a good deal out of this,
Speaker 1: and unless I've really stuff it up, it should sell
Speaker 1: pretty well.
Speaker 2: And be therapeutic for you almost in the process.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say. So
Speaker 1: the person I wrote the book for the first draft,
Speaker 1: I wrote for myself, and I love to just write
Speaker 1: the story, to get the story down. Of whether or
Speaker 1: not it works commercially became a secondary element to because
Speaker 1: you have the public publisher who Affirm Press did a
Speaker 1: great job and was so easy to work with and
Speaker 1: gave me so much freedom or autonomy for an unknown author,
Speaker 1: which was great as well, But in so many ways
Speaker 1: they wanted it to be like Jack Ryan goes to
Speaker 1: entire Yeah.
Speaker 2: And you're like, yeah, I'll play into that or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm like sure, And that's why you can see
Speaker 1: elements in the book that it has a bit of that,
Speaker 1: but it has to be commercially successful as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it was true. Some of those operations, like
Speaker 2: the evacuating medical evacuation. I was like, that's a movie.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that was one of the moments because people
Speaker 1: do that when you decide to write the book. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we did the medical evacuation on Christmas twenty twenty, using
Speaker 1: the Chinese and American programs to help us there. And
Speaker 1: that was like a two week operation, working around the
Speaker 1: clock right on the on Christmas for a Christmas miracles
Speaker 1: and it had everything. It's got helicopters, it's got tension,
Speaker 1: it's got drama, it's got medical problems.
Speaker 2: And like international cooperation. I was like, oh my god.
Speaker 1: Briefing the Chinese pilots was so much fun because we
Speaker 1: had to do it under COVID protocols as well, so
Speaker 1: I've laminated like giant meteorological charts and all these like
Speaker 1: photos that normally would use a PowerPoint in the briefing room,
Speaker 1: but we had to do it outside with masters, so
Speaker 1: outside like minus ten degrees. Luck, it wasn't that windy,
Speaker 1: but briefing these pilots using like hand signals and broken English,
Speaker 1: and it was just like, this is the coolest aviation
Speaker 1: briefing ever in.
Speaker 2: The history of humanity.
Speaker 1: All the most ridiculous. It was just it was so
Speaker 1: and the Chinese pilots were freaking unreal and spoke great,
Speaker 1: pretty good. Well, they spoke a lot better English than
Speaker 1: I did Mandarin, for one, And that was just this
Speaker 1: cool moment. And then watching that helicopter take off and
Speaker 1: take the team up to the runway that that'd spend
Speaker 1: a week in land building the runway before we could
Speaker 1: even evacuate the patient. But watching that helicopter fly off
Speaker 1: kind of into the sunset was one of the moments
Speaker 1: I'm like, jeez, this is getting pretty movie, yesque, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is getting there. And then and then later on,
Speaker 1: like as I get another spoiler alert, and then there's a
Speaker 1: photo of it in the book anyway, and it's mentioned
Speaker 1: in the forward. But so halfway home, the whole thing's over.
Speaker 1: Like day five hundred and twenty eight or something like that,
Speaker 1: fifth of April ten fifty eight in the morning, the
Speaker 1: ship has a catastrophic explosion.
Speaker 2: This is a fire on your rescue ship.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we just like everyone there in the ship, disabled,
Speaker 1: rocking side to side in the Southern Ocean, standing there
Speaker 1: with life jackets on, ready to abandon ship. And we
Speaker 1: stood there for kind of hours while they fought the fire,
Speaker 1: got it under control, and then eventually six hours later
Speaker 1: got the ship restarted on one engine and then toned
Speaker 1: to fremantle. And I'm like in that moment, standing in
Speaker 1: the forecastle of the ship, ready like next to the lifeboats,
Speaker 1: ready to abandon ship, but everyone around you just looking
Speaker 1: into the distance, like thousand yards stairs just going in
Speaker 1: every direction of just like just like like this is
Speaker 1: how it ends. We have to abandon ship, Like you're
Speaker 1: kidding me. I'm like, this is definitely going to get
Speaker 1: me a book deal.
Speaker 2: And James Cameron should make movie, just saying.
Speaker 1: Well, I kind of want because I've had a couple
Speaker 1: of meetings that started to get towards okay, how do
Speaker 1: I TV actually do? Yeah, well, I'd want to get
Speaker 1: like Tykle with t and Chris hanswith Tiger.
Speaker 2: That'd be amazing, I know.
Speaker 1: I just don't know how I'm about to get them.
Speaker 2: We're actually friends with the Hamsweth so we can, well,
Speaker 2: we can make the imagine being like I want Chris
Speaker 2: Hamsweth to play me.
Speaker 1: Well I do, and I've said that and he just
Speaker 1: does and people just laugh at me. I'm like, I
Speaker 1: really love it. Who else would do it?
Speaker 2: You definitely have some humor and drama injected into it exactly.
Speaker 1: I think other classics of people are like, oh maybe
Speaker 1: Sam Worthington. I'm like, maybe if we can't get a Hemsworth.
Speaker 2: I bet young knew at done true. Never thought you'd
Speaker 2: be picking Hollywood stars to actually maybe play you in
Speaker 2: a in a like epic, a Hollywood epic about the adventure.
Speaker 1: No, but why not? I mean why not? Dream? This
Speaker 1: is the same with the book deal. There was there
Speaker 1: was people that said, I know books, no one reads
Speaker 1: it anymore than the like you'll be you're such a wanker,
Speaker 1: like what like you know, like it's so funny. You
Speaker 1: probably get this with podcasting and other and the stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, like people like the haters or the trolls.
Speaker 1: It's the worst part of our society. But Jesus hard
Speaker 1: to ignore.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Tall Poppy in Australia's Wow, it's.
Speaker 1: Rough And I've had a few people kind of go
Speaker 1: hard on it and they're like, oh, I how did
Speaker 1: why did you think you had the right to write
Speaker 1: that book. I'm like, what's the true story mate? Like,
Speaker 1: and it actually happened. It happened, and it was vetted
Speaker 1: by a number of My team helped with fact checking
Speaker 1: stuff and making sure I didn't over state different things
Speaker 1: or like got that right, got that checked by the experts, checked,
Speaker 1: the logs checked, my diaries checked foight, like it's it's
Speaker 1: as accurate as it can be. And they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know I've done more than you. I don't have
Speaker 1: a book. And I'm like, we'll go right, well, I'm
Speaker 1: not stopping you, and and that sort of Look there
Speaker 1: they are one percent and we've sold nearly fourteen thousand copies.
Speaker 2: You're a bestseller.
Speaker 1: Yeah, bestseller. It was the top in the top ten
Speaker 1: best selling Australian autobiographies last year. That's amazing, which is
Speaker 1: just incredible. And and so you go, okay, and one
Speaker 1: guy was like, you were a wenker.
Speaker 2: He's the loudest though they're always the loudest.
Speaker 1: Other thirteen thousand people I do the reading reviews and
Speaker 1: getting fan mail and stuff. It is, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: But I find that. But yet, when so anyone out
Speaker 1: there listening that that does want to write a book
Speaker 1: or do something that someone's telling you not to do,
Speaker 1: forget about them and speak to someone that's done it
Speaker 1: because every author I spoke to said nothing other than
Speaker 1: like best thing you'll ever do. Like they were super supportive.
Speaker 1: That was super helpful with like who to speak to
Speaker 1: and how to structure things, and then same with like
Speaker 1: do we go down the path of trying to get
Speaker 1: a movie deal out of it? And that, and yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some people like, oh, you're such a wanker for
Speaker 1: thinking that. I'm like, yeah, but why not? Like it's
Speaker 1: sold enough copies, it's a great true story and you
Speaker 1: can just see it. You're like, yeah, why not. I
Speaker 1: mean it might take twenty years or thirties, I'll never
Speaker 1: get done and just another project, but you go give
Speaker 1: it a shot.
Speaker 2: Why not?
Speaker 1: I think that's something again, Like I'd never written a
Speaker 1: book before, and I thought, maybe get a ghost write.
Speaker 1: I'm like, no, I'll just learn how to write a book.
Speaker 1: So probably like there's a how to write a book
Speaker 1: book behind you, behind me there somewhere, and how to author. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was a fun process to go, Okay, Well, I'll
Speaker 1: just reread like my ten favorite books that are adventury kind,
Speaker 1: like things like inter Thinner, Yeah to zero and these
Speaker 1: sorts of bings. Go Okay, I'll read them and look
Speaker 1: at them through the lens of how they structured, yeah,
Speaker 1: the photo bit in the middle and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: and then start writing and then just get better and better.
Speaker 1: And some of the early drafts are terrible. I think
Speaker 1: my brother, who is really helpful, his feedback of the
Speaker 1: first draft, He's like, well, it's a good story, you
Speaker 1: just haven't told it.
Speaker 2: Well, you're just telling it shit. Yeah, I mean honest
Speaker 2: advice is very so good.
Speaker 1: And then the best I love this story. So there's
Speaker 1: a thank you in the back of the book. I
Speaker 1: haven't been able to track he Daniel a thank you
Speaker 1: in the book to someone, to a girl called Coco
Speaker 1: who worked at the office works right near my house.
Speaker 1: Because every this process of writing where every Friday I'd
Speaker 1: print out the current draft or the chapters that I've
Speaker 1: been working on, and then i'd review it, read petted
Speaker 1: over the weekend, and then we got back to Monday
Speaker 1: morning I'd start rewriting. And so every week I was
Speaker 1: in there dropping off, you know, behind masks, behind plastic screens,
Speaker 1: dropping off the books. But then one day she kind
Speaker 1: of goes, is this you or like behind my own
Speaker 1: I'm like, this is this your own book. I'm like yeah,
Speaker 1: she's like I was. I was like, do you mind
Speaker 1: if I print my own copy and or have a
Speaker 1: read And I'm like yeah, one hundred percent. So she
Speaker 1: and I'm like, but give me, give me some feedback.
Speaker 1: She's like, yeah, for sure. And she was the first
Speaker 1: person to read the book that didn't know me, which
Speaker 1: was really cool. But then Roman's great book report on
Speaker 1: what was good was what didn't work or how to
Speaker 1: so lovely of her and it was so good. So yeah,
Speaker 1: she gets she got to thank you in the the
Speaker 1: book and has a very early raw draft of it
Speaker 1: as well, and that was something. And I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's that's cool. If the random office works photocopy of it,
Speaker 1: loves it, loves it, who would see a lot of
Speaker 1: I'm sure they see a lot of mediocre books that
Speaker 1: they have to print. So that was that was kind
Speaker 1: of a cool story. But so again, that's sort of
Speaker 1: to people that if you're worried about then't just go
Speaker 1: and learn learn about it, think about it, and then
Speaker 1: back yourself in to go and any Again, this kind
Speaker 1: of comes back with my law of physics quote, like
Speaker 1: anything that humans do is a learned skill. No one
Speaker 1: was born knowing how to do all the things we
Speaker 1: know how to do the learned skills. NASA only takes
Speaker 1: like twenty four months to train astronauts. You know, they
Speaker 1: obviously that with degrees and shit, but their core astronauts
Speaker 1: training is like, what do you need to.
Speaker 2: Be an astronaut? Degrees and shit?
Speaker 1: Yeah, degrees and shit. Yeah some of them. I mean,
Speaker 1: these overachievers just calm down with some of their stuff.
Speaker 2: But dear astronauts, calm down. Calm down, it says the
Speaker 2: ex defense diplomat Antarctic Expedition leader author speaker.
Speaker 1: Hey yeah, but I just have an arts degree.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, true. But you also I did find one
Speaker 2: other fun fact when you were like, I don't have
Speaker 2: any awards, and like, didn't you win like some silver
Speaker 2: medal for like performed skydiving in Dubai.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a skyliven compatation.
Speaker 2: It's like Australian Defense Medal diving skyd.
Speaker 1: I could see that twelve skyd off Dubai freestyle.
Speaker 2: But I mean, you are a wonderful, wonderful example, and
Speaker 2: I love that you brought up that whole haters controlling
Speaker 2: thing that no matter what you do, even if it's
Speaker 2: the coolest story ever, Like, there will always be the
Speaker 2: small percentage of people who just resent your success, and
Speaker 2: they're always the loudest, They're always the ones that are
Speaker 2: impossible to ignore. But if you let them dictate your decisions,
Speaker 2: then literally the fifteen thousand and that's only the people
Speaker 2: you know who bought the book let alone, who it
Speaker 2: was passed on to it, Like every copy gets read,
Speaker 2: you know, a million times, and if you had let
Speaker 2: one person who was loud dictate that that you would
Speaker 2: have deprived all of those people of the story that
Speaker 2: they wanted to hear. And like it's it's absolutely fascinating,
Speaker 2: and I think we are too controlled by what other
Speaker 2: people think listen to the loudest voice is not the
Speaker 2: most important ones and miss out on so many opportunities
Speaker 2: that way. Whereas it's become your career. Now you're on
Speaker 2: the speaking circuit, you have a book, you've got the
Speaker 2: potential for a movie which would absolutely blow the big
Speaker 2: screen away. Like I think it's just it's almost a
Speaker 2: sign that you've made it when someone is invested enough
Speaker 2: in what you're doing to be a hater, Like that's
Speaker 2: all you have to think of it as is, pat
Speaker 2: myself on the back. I'm going to hate I'm made.
Speaker 1: That is a great way to look at it, Like, wow,
Speaker 1: I've got trolls and haters. You're like made it, I'm famous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Like that's how I see it. I'm like,
Speaker 2: the minute I had someone who was passionate enough to
Speaker 2: express their dislike, I was like, shit, man, that's impact.
Speaker 2: Negative impact, but it's still impact.
Speaker 1: I love the one that when you're flying to Hobart,
Speaker 1: like Mona the Gallery, they've got all their billboards, they
Speaker 1: just have all the bad reviews. Yes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're never going to please everyone anyway, that's not
Speaker 2: the point. I feel like, if you stood for everything,
Speaker 2: you'd stood for nothing. So well, I have already taken
Speaker 2: up so much of your time and I could talk
Speaker 2: to you. I mean, obviously we could talk for hours.
Speaker 2: This is like our third hour of just chatting shit
Speaker 2: about life. But I will let you get on with
Speaker 2: the rest of your day. But where can people find
Speaker 2: the book? Where can people find you if they want
Speaker 2: to engage you for leadership speaking, because I know that's
Speaker 2: something you're incredibly good at. Where can they find you?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So the books five hundred and thirty seven days
Speaker 1: of winter. It's in all good bookstores around the Australian
Speaker 1: newsales and a lot of the airport bookstores. It seems
Speaker 1: to be very well stopped there. Those otherwise online through
Speaker 1: book Topia or whoever you like to use there or
Speaker 1: a lot of little community libraries. Anytime I stuff up
Speaker 1: a signature, I put one in a community library. I
Speaker 1: stuff up a lot of signatures for someone that wrote
Speaker 1: a book.
Speaker 2: Is there one in the Davis Library, Davistation Library, they.
Speaker 1: Are in the Australian at tytic state. I don't know
Speaker 1: that there's a few. And there's one on the ship
Speaker 1: that was supposed to bring me home amazing, so they
Speaker 1: are down if you're on an attactic station, grab a copy.
Speaker 1: Otherwise for speaking, Yeah, through my website www dot david
Speaker 1: off dot com, or through Saxton Speakers who do a
Speaker 1: great job book me out and everything. And yeah, and
Speaker 1: I'd love to love to come and chat to companies
Speaker 1: and schools and different community groups about anything from either
Speaker 1: just telling the story of orders like to run an
Speaker 1: antatic station during a pandemic, or around my mental health strategies,
Speaker 1: leadership experiences. Leadership training for junior leaders is probably one
Speaker 1: of my favorite workshops to run is to get out
Speaker 1: there with people that want to start their leadership journey
Speaker 1: and they don't quite know where it's going to take them,
Speaker 1: and that's that's always great to get some young minds
Speaker 1: and all right, careful what you wish for?
Speaker 2: Well, I'll include the direct links to all of that
Speaker 2: in the show notes for anyone who's interested, which I'm
Speaker 2: sure will be everyone we've already had. Literally it was
Speaker 2: like a teaser and people like, who is he?
Speaker 1: Where can I.
Speaker 2: Get his book? God, this is very exciting, so I
Speaker 2: will share all that. Thank you so much for sharing
Speaker 2: your story. I wish we could do like a full
Speaker 2: Joe Ragan five hour episode because I would have just
Speaker 2: kept chatting, but I'll make sure everyone gets their copy
Speaker 2: of the book instead. And good luck this summer. Wish
Speaker 2: I was coming with you, going to be.
Speaker 1: It's going to be good chaos, I think this summer.
Speaker 1: But now, thanks so much for Amian. I was cracked out.
Speaker 1: I could chat to you for hours as well, So
Speaker 1: best to like with it with the podcast and what's
Speaker 1: in your future as well.
Speaker 2: Thank you Jeers, what a man, what an adventure. I
Speaker 2: highly recommend you read David's book, and as mentioned, I'll
Speaker 2: pop the direct link with his speaking links and website
Speaker 2: as well into the show notes. Please do show him
Speaker 2: some love for squeezing us he into his busy schedule
Speaker 2: before he heads back down south. I think even in
Speaker 2: a couple of days, by sharing the episode and tagging
Speaker 2: at five hundred and thirty seven days of Winter. If
Speaker 2: you enjoyed listening along In the meantime, I hope you're
Speaker 2: all having an amazing week and are seizing your yay.
Speaker 1: What think? Yeah,