Speaker 1: Hallo, beautiful neighborhood.
Speaker 2: I had a fresh new episode ready for you for today,
Speaker 2: but I saw on Facebook Memories what a marvelous invention
Speaker 2: that it's been one year exactly since one of our
Speaker 2: most popular episodes ever, so it felt like a nice
Speaker 2: time to bump this one back into your ears, especially
Speaker 2: with so many of us still in lockdown. I personally
Speaker 2: loved the escapism of going back to this one again,
Speaker 2: so hopefully some of you do too, or if you
Speaker 2: missed it the first time, it is one of my
Speaker 2: favorites ever. Please ignore any time specific references, although most
Speaker 2: of our ya is evergreen, so hopefully you enjoy it
Speaker 2: as much as I did the first time, the second time,
Speaker 2: and probably the third time that I've listened to it.
Speaker 2: I truly soak this one up, as you guys can
Speaker 2: tell since a year later, I'm still banging on about it,
Speaker 2: and I'll keep this week's fresh episode for you for
Speaker 2: next week, which is also a banger you might have
Speaker 2: seen on socials that We very very closely followed the
Speaker 2: amazing Jess Fox's Gold Metal performance in Tokyo this year
Speaker 2: and was so lucky to be able to sit down
Speaker 2: with her while she is in we are preparing for
Speaker 2: the World Cup to chat about that experience, Her Way,
Speaker 2: Toya to get there and everything else in between, which
Speaker 2: I'm so excited to share, So make sure you've subscribed
Speaker 2: to get that one as well next week.
Speaker 3: When it drops, the water is like coffee. You cannot
Speaker 3: see your hand in front of your face. So that
Speaker 3: must have been just horrific swimming through that water waiting
Speaker 3: to find all these bodies. When suddenly these lights came
Speaker 3: on and one by one all these boys started running
Speaker 3: down the hill. Of course, the whole world suddenly went, yeah,
Speaker 3: they're saved, you know, no worries, But anyone who knows
Speaker 3: anything about caving and cave diving went, oh my god,
Speaker 3: what do we do now? There are risks out there,
Speaker 3: but without risk taking, we don't become resilient. We don't
Speaker 3: become confident. We have to do things that challenges and
Speaker 3: can be hard or uncomfortable. If you think you're no good,
Speaker 3: it's something, the best way to fix it is to
Speaker 3: just do it.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Seas 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 the platforms 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 Yea. I'm
Speaker 2: Sarah Davidson or a spoonful of Sarah, a lawyer turned
Speaker 2: funentrepreneur who swapped the suits and heels to co found
Speaker 2: matcha Maiden and matcha Milk Bar. Sez the Ya is
Speaker 2: a series of conversations on finding a life you love
Speaker 2: and exploring the self doubt, challenge, joy and fulfillment along
Speaker 2: the way. Sometimes I choose our guests out of purely
Speaker 2: selfish curiosity to converse with a particular person, regardless of
Speaker 2: whether anyone else would find them interesting, although I suspect
Speaker 2: most of you will be as fascinated by doctor Richard
Speaker 2: Harris as I am.
Speaker 1: After a random.
Speaker 2: News article led me off on a multi hour internet
Speaker 2: tangent a few weeks ago, I bought doctor Harris's book
Speaker 2: against all odds and got it in my head that
Speaker 2: I had to talk to him, and I'm so glad
Speaker 2: He very kindly agreed to.
Speaker 1: Jump on the show.
Speaker 2: You know, I get overly excited about the unique way
Speaker 2: our talents and interests can intersect to create a yayfield life.
Speaker 2: And Doctor Harris, or Harry as he insists I call him,
Speaker 2: has a truly unique set of skills as an anthetist
Speaker 2: and technical cave diver. I'm pretty sure I said that wrong. Aneseotist,
Speaker 2: a nethetist anyway, you know what I'm saying. So unique,
Speaker 2: in fact were his skills that he was pretty much
Speaker 2: the only person in the world equipped to help sedate
Speaker 2: and thereby save the thirteen young Thaie boys of the
Speaker 2: Wild Boars soccer team who got stuck four kilometers into
Speaker 2: a cave in Thailand in the rainy season of twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: along with diving mate and co author Dr Craig Challon,
Speaker 2: with whom he won Australian of the Year last year.
Speaker 2: I don't think I need to say much more to
Speaker 2: explain why I'm fascinated by historian skill set. I gush
Speaker 2: a lot in this one, but I just couldn't fathom
Speaker 2: the enormity of the task before him, the details of
Speaker 2: which definitely went over my head watching it on the
Speaker 2: news at the time, among many other things. Harry also
Speaker 2: has his own wonderful podcast, the Real Risk Podcast, so
Speaker 2: was equipped with a proper mic, such a pro so
Speaker 2: that'll be a nice little break from our guest zoom audio.
Speaker 2: I highly recommend both his book and his podcast, the
Speaker 2: latest episode of which is actually with the legendary James
Speaker 2: Cameron of Titanic fame. I'll include links at the end,
Speaker 2: and I hope you enjoy doctor Harris, even though you
Speaker 2: very humbly told me I was only allowed to call
Speaker 2: you that once. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Are you welcome, Sarah?
Speaker 2: I am so impressed. You have such a good setup
Speaker 2: going there. You're the first person in a long time
Speaker 2: who's had a professional mic.
Speaker 3: Well, we're both professionals here, and we've both chosen the
Speaker 3: same microphone, so we're off to a good start.
Speaker 1: Great minds.
Speaker 2: So we usually kick off each episode with a little icebreaker,
Speaker 2: but I've taken to adding in as simple how are you?
Speaker 2: Since twenty twenty has been so crazy? And I think
Speaker 2: Adelaide is faring a bit better than we are here
Speaker 2: in Victoria. But how are you going over there?
Speaker 3: Well? We are extraordinarily lucky here in South Australia. As
Speaker 3: you know, we've got very few cases and we're still
Speaker 3: wandering the streets pretty well, so I feel like I
Speaker 3: have no reason to complain at all looking what you
Speaker 3: guys are suffering through in Victoria.
Speaker 2: Well, thankfully, getting totally engrossed in books and stories like
Speaker 2: yours has definitely been helping me through, which brings me
Speaker 2: back to the actual icebreaker, which is to ask what
Speaker 2: the most down to earth thing is about each guest.
Speaker 2: And that's mainly because for people who have been in
Speaker 2: the media, and particularly yourself, after having read your book
Speaker 2: twice in the past couple of weeks, it can be
Speaker 2: so easy to put people on a pedestal and forget
Speaker 2: they're not superheroes, even though of course I still insist.
Speaker 3: That you are.
Speaker 2: And I've actually heard you refer to yourself a couple
Speaker 2: of times as a paunchy old man, so I'm sure
Speaker 2: there's something relatable that you can share in between all
Speaker 2: the superpowers.
Speaker 3: Oh well, in addition to being a punchy middle aged man.
Speaker 3: If you could see me now, I'm in my tracking
Speaker 3: docks and my ug boots and i haven't shaved for
Speaker 3: three days because I've had the weekend off. So, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm just a dag.
Speaker 1: Amazing. I love it.
Speaker 2: I love that you think you're a dag, mean while
Speaker 2: you're out actually saving the world. But that's really nice
Speaker 2: that you think that.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the first section is Your Wayta, which again
Speaker 2: focuses on humanizing our guests, tracing their story and pathway
Speaker 2: back through you know, all the chapters that came before
Speaker 2: the one we often encounter them in and I love
Speaker 2: to remind the listeners just how uniquely we all find
Speaker 2: our place in the world and how nonlinear the journey
Speaker 2: to get there often is. So take us back to
Speaker 2: young Harry. What was your childhood? Like doctor and nurse
Speaker 2: parents are really outdoorsy beginning to your life?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think I had a very privileged childhood.
Speaker 3: As you said, my parents both had good jobs. My
Speaker 3: dad was a surgeon, so we were never short of money,
Speaker 3: we never had to do anything you know, tough really,
Speaker 3: so I consider myself to be incredibly lucky through just
Speaker 3: my birth and most circumstances. So life was, you know,
Speaker 3: as close to perfection as it could be. I think
Speaker 3: we're a very happy family, really close, very tight with
Speaker 3: our you know, uncles and aunties and cousins, you know,
Speaker 3: big extended family, very Australian upbringing here in Adelaide. Life
Speaker 3: for me revolved around summer. You know, I would be
Speaker 3: pretty much in my short snow shirt, pair of thongs
Speaker 3: and walking, whether it was walking the streets or walking
Speaker 3: the beaches, getting sun burnt so badly every year that
Speaker 3: I would sort of count how good a summer it
Speaker 3: was by how many times my back peeled off, you know,
Speaker 3: that sort of disgraceful upbringing that you would be. You know,
Speaker 3: the parents would be sent to prison for child abuse
Speaker 3: now if that happened.
Speaker 1: But we've come a long way.
Speaker 3: We have, and you know, I'm not saying this is
Speaker 3: a good thing, but that was that was summer for us.
Speaker 3: It was just stub toes and thongs and foot shorts
Speaker 3: and sunburn and growing up in a family who loved
Speaker 3: the ocean, small boats, catching whiting ie fish to eat,
Speaker 3: and also at the same time exploring the sea as
Speaker 3: a young boy as a snorkeler with a little hand
Speaker 3: spear trying to catch food and look at stuff. I
Speaker 3: just loved it, just look at stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think one of the things I loved
Speaker 2: so much about your story. The first time I heard
Speaker 2: it was that you can trace both your medical interests
Speaker 2: and your underwater interests back to those early days. Even
Speaker 2: though possibly no one could have guessed how that would
Speaker 2: manifest later, it was present right from those early days.
Speaker 2: And you've got your open water diving course at fifteen,
Speaker 2: so you'd started diving at least not in caves just yet,
Speaker 2: but you'd started the diving process.
Speaker 1: Then what drove you towards that?
Speaker 3: Well, it was an extension of the snorkeling and spearfishing
Speaker 3: for me, and in fact I started diving probably when
Speaker 3: I was about thirteen. We're lucky to have family friends
Speaker 3: who were into it. A couple of my parents' friends.
Speaker 3: One was a woman who was a marine biologist who
Speaker 3: was a really important figure in my childhood. In retrospect
Speaker 3: looking back, I used to go spearfishing, and I recount
Speaker 3: one story in the book. I think that I came
Speaker 3: back from catching some reef fish which were completely inedible,
Speaker 3: and I laid them proudly on the beach in front
Speaker 3: of all the parents. I must have been twelve or
Speaker 3: thirteen at the time, and this lady came over to
Speaker 3: me and went, oh, OK, what have you caught here.
Speaker 3: And I said, well, I don't really know what their
Speaker 3: names are, but this is you know, I'm pretty proud
Speaker 3: of myself. And she said, well, you know, this one's
Speaker 3: are such and such, and this is what it eats
Speaker 3: and that's where it lives. And of course you can't
Speaker 3: eat that one, it's not edible. And one by one
Speaker 3: she went through the fish and told me what they were,
Speaker 3: and told me about their habits and all this sort
Speaker 3: of stuff. And she then said, very cleverly, so what
Speaker 3: are you going to do with them now? And I
Speaker 3: suddenly felt this wave of shame over me that I
Speaker 3: just killed these really interesting and pretty fish for no
Speaker 3: reason whatsoever. And from that point on I kind of
Speaker 3: changed the way I looked at the water, and it
Speaker 3: really made me think about what I was doing. So
Speaker 3: it didn't stop me spearfishing. I mean I loved I
Speaker 3: did enjoy it, and so, but I would only shoot
Speaker 3: a fish that I could eat. And I decided to
Speaker 3: learn the names and the habits of all these fish.
Speaker 3: In fact, she gave me a book. I've still got it.
Speaker 3: The first book I had, called The Marine and Freshwater
Speaker 3: Fishes of South Australia, was produced by the South Australian Museum,
Speaker 3: and I had all these beautiful black and white plates
Speaker 3: of the fishes, pictures and names, and I just studied it.
Speaker 3: I became obsessed by it and decided then and there
Speaker 3: that I was going to be a marine biologist, which
Speaker 3: a dream that I really hung onto actually, And it
Speaker 3: was almost a toss of the coin choice between that,
Speaker 3: veterinary science and medicine for me, which of the three
Speaker 3: I would do. And I ended up in medicine, partly
Speaker 3: because I got the marks to do it, and I
Speaker 3: missed out on vet science. Interestingly, I had enough marks
Speaker 3: to be a doctor, but not to be a vet
Speaker 3: and a cousin who was doing marine biology told me
Speaker 3: that there were no jobs in the field and taught
Speaker 3: me out of it. So it was and still is
Speaker 3: quite a strong interest for me.
Speaker 2: It's so interesting looking back now and realizing how just
Speaker 2: how early that was in your journey, and how much
Speaker 2: more control you have over your decisions later in life
Speaker 2: than you think. I imagine at that time, when you
Speaker 2: were choosing between those three things, you thought it was
Speaker 2: like a forever choice and it was the most important
Speaker 2: decision you were ever going to make. But I think
Speaker 2: we so overestimate how final that decision is and how
Speaker 2: many different directions your life is expected to go after that.
Speaker 2: And you know, medicine didn't put an end to your
Speaker 2: marine adventures at all.
Speaker 3: No, definitely not, although I do I worry about some
Speaker 3: doctors because they do become completely immersed in the world
Speaker 3: of medicine and their career. It's almost like a vocation
Speaker 3: for them, and many of them find themselves at retirement age.
Speaker 3: And I'm starting to see, you know, some colleagues who
Speaker 3: are maybe ten years older than me, they're getting close
Speaker 3: to retirement, and some of them have said to me, Ah,
Speaker 3: I sort of admire the way you've conducted your life, Harry,
Speaker 3: you know, or other outside interests, because I'm suddenly thinking
Speaker 3: I don't know what I'm going to do with myself.
Speaker 3: I've got nothing else. And you need doctors to be
Speaker 3: pretty focused, obviously on their job, and you'd want that
Speaker 3: in your doctor as a patient. But I also think
Speaker 3: it's very important that your doctor has a life outside
Speaker 3: of medicine, because how can they relate to people normally.
Speaker 3: I mean, some doctors don't really have to if they're
Speaker 3: looking at your X rays or looking at a piece
Speaker 3: of view under the microscope. But you know, if you
Speaker 3: want your GP to be a well rounded person, so
Speaker 3: they have some idea of what goes on outside their office.
Speaker 2: It's so interesting that you said that, because this is
Speaker 2: where I get so fascinated. So I think the people
Speaker 2: who tend to be not necessarily the most successful. And
Speaker 2: the whole idea of this podcast is to separate and
Speaker 2: make a distinction between success and fulfillment, because I think
Speaker 2: we chase success, we get on this very productivity hamster
Speaker 2: wheel and end up on this autopilot's circuit that can
Speaker 2: lead people to be in their fifties and sixties and
Speaker 2: retirement age and have no hobbies and no interests and
Speaker 2: no experience and think what have I done this time?
Speaker 2: But the people who have sort of recalibrated from financial
Speaker 2: metrics and titles and looked for joy and had activities,
Speaker 2: I call them your playt eight. Like if you don't
Speaker 2: play outside your vocation, you're missing a whole part of
Speaker 2: yourself that's for joy and exploration and that develops other
Speaker 2: sides of you that actually makes you a better worker
Speaker 2: as well, because you've got a.
Speaker 1: Breadth of experience behind you.
Speaker 2: And I love that You've always had such a strong
Speaker 2: endeavor outside of career that some would think would be
Speaker 2: all consuming, but you've still managed to do both, and
Speaker 2: I think it's obviously made you better for it and
Speaker 2: made your life experience better for it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and look, I mean it depends how you measure success,
Speaker 3: for example, in medicine or in any career. But you know,
Speaker 3: obviously there are anythetus out there who are far more academic,
Speaker 3: They've done more research, they might be professors, they might
Speaker 3: be far more skilled even at giving an anesthetic. But
Speaker 3: I certainly feel that I do enough and have been
Speaker 3: well rounded enough to give a good quality anesthetic, a
Speaker 3: safe anesthetic. I'm not saying I'm the best, but I
Speaker 3: don't think i'm the worst. Fortunately, it's not a bad
Speaker 3: place to be. No. No, So I don't think I'm
Speaker 3: a star of Anesesia by any stretch. But my career
Speaker 3: has been so interesting to me, at least because I
Speaker 3: haven't been happy just to give anesthetics nine to five.
Speaker 3: I've really mixed it up in terms of the places
Speaker 3: I've worked, the types of medical work that I've done,
Speaker 3: which include stuff aligned with but not purely anesesia. The
Speaker 3: whole time, so that's been really important to me as well.
Speaker 3: I find I get this sort of five year each
Speaker 3: with my work. Where I go, I think I need
Speaker 3: to shake things up a bit and try something a
Speaker 3: bit different. I always do some anesesia, but the other
Speaker 3: half the time or part of the time, I might
Speaker 3: be off doing diving medicine, or eero medical retrieval work,
Speaker 3: or working in a third world country, or just something different.
Speaker 3: And as long as it fits in with the family,
Speaker 3: which it usually does, you know, it's been a huge
Speaker 3: success for me.
Speaker 2: And that's the other thing that you just touched on
Speaker 2: that's important, is that it only has to really work
Speaker 2: for you. We're all meant to have different interpretations of
Speaker 2: a successful and joyful and fulfilling career, and for some
Speaker 2: that is pure academic achievement and rigor, and for others
Speaker 2: that does involve more of a balance.
Speaker 1: And I love that.
Speaker 2: I love finding people who have stuck to things that
Speaker 2: have really invigorated them their whole lives and not let
Speaker 2: go of it because society thinks that things should look
Speaker 2: a certain way, or career paths should look a certain way.
Speaker 3: I certainly don't want to disrespect those medical people who
Speaker 3: are so focused and so passionate about their work that
Speaker 3: that is their life. I mean, that's fantastic, but that's
Speaker 3: never been me. I can't be happy unless I've got
Speaker 3: some way of making life a bit messy along the way.
Speaker 2: Well, your life has definitely not been short of a
Speaker 2: challenge in terms of all of your vocations. So before
Speaker 2: we get to obviously the chapter that I am so
Speaker 2: so excited to talk to you more about, how did
Speaker 2: you actually start that kind of broad practice.
Speaker 1: So firstly, it takes a really.
Speaker 2: Long time to specialize, as in anything including anesthesia, and
Speaker 2: then on top of that to branch out after your
Speaker 2: specialization to get experience in aeromedical work. You ended up
Speaker 2: in New Zealand, and then you were here and then
Speaker 2: rural communities and then even started to sort of move
Speaker 2: your way back towards diving in hyperbaric medicine back in Adelaide.
Speaker 1: How did you craft that?
Speaker 2: Do you have that level of control from early or
Speaker 2: did you set out from the beginning, like how did
Speaker 2: you build that career for yourself?
Speaker 3: A lot of it's a bit I kind of go
Speaker 3: with the flow sometimes, but it comes back to this
Speaker 3: getting bored easily probably if I'm doing the same thing
Speaker 3: for too long, I start to seek out other opportunities.
Speaker 3: So diving in hyperbaric medicine was an obvious one because
Speaker 3: of my interest in diving since such a young age,
Speaker 3: and a lot of hyperbaric medicine units in the public
Speaker 3: hospitals in Australia are run by an esthetus or intensive
Speaker 3: care doctors or emergency medicine people or occupational physicians tend
Speaker 3: to be the group, but anissaus primarily, so I was
Speaker 3: always surrounded by people who worked in that field and
Speaker 3: it was always in the back of my mind that
Speaker 3: that's something I'd like to do. And yeah, an opportunity
Speaker 3: came up, basically, so I started to do that and
Speaker 3: working part time, and I was just starting to think
Speaker 3: about maybe I've done this for long enough. I'd been
Speaker 3: working there about twelve years part time, and I actually
Speaker 3: opened the health Essay Health computer to renew my application
Speaker 3: or whatever it was, and the advertisement popped up for MedStar,
Speaker 3: Theessa Ambulance eramedical Service recruiting. Now I went, oh, that's me,
Speaker 3: And that had been the other thing that I'd just
Speaker 3: been thinking about because I did a bit of it
Speaker 3: when I was training as an anissa, certainly in Adelaide
Speaker 3: and New Zealand. I did some so that had been
Speaker 3: in the back of my mind is something I'd like
Speaker 3: to revisit. And so this message popped up on the computer.
Speaker 3: I said, wow, I could just give them a call.
Speaker 3: I suppose see what happens. And I knew the guy
Speaker 3: who was the director of the service, and so I
Speaker 3: just gave him a ring and said, look, I haven't
Speaker 3: done this for the last eight years or something, since
Speaker 3: I was a trainee or a bit longer. Perhaps is
Speaker 3: it worth me coming down for a chat? And he said, sure, Harry,
Speaker 3: come down, We'll have a talk. And there it was.
Speaker 3: So I got into that and really threw myself into that.
Speaker 3: Then I found it to be really to my liking.
Speaker 3: I love the excitement of that work, and I love
Speaker 3: the organization and the people that work. They're amazing bunch
Speaker 3: of doctors, nurses and paramedics, all really extraordinary people. And yeah,
Speaker 3: it got right into it and was going well until
Speaker 3: this crazy thing in Thailand happened when I had to
Speaker 3: sadly sort of step away from it because I just
Speaker 3: didn't have time to commit to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I still actually looking at your LinkedIn and the.
Speaker 1: Timeline, I was like, how has he fitted in all
Speaker 1: this stuff? Oh my god, how are you not a hundred?
Speaker 2: It's just I think you're such a testament to the
Speaker 2: fact that you can fit in a lot of life experience.
Speaker 2: If you're good at time management and you're committed to
Speaker 2: if you genuinely love it, you can make room for
Speaker 2: the things that you love.
Speaker 3: Well. My wife does take note that if ever things
Speaker 3: are a bit quiet, diary is looking a bit empty,
Speaker 3: then I will find a project to sabotage that status
Speaker 3: quo very quickly, and I usually end up regretting it, going,
Speaker 3: oh my god, I've got so much on my plate,
Speaker 3: and I get really stressed. But then she says, she
Speaker 3: notes that, well, as soon as you're quiet, then you
Speaker 3: know you do it to yourself. You find something to
Speaker 3: take one.
Speaker 1: Sucker for punishment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I also think people who have an insatiable
Speaker 2: thirst for adventure and extension, like self extension and mind
Speaker 2: opening and new experiences your comfort zone. I have stepped
Speaker 2: out of it once, obviously, leaving corporate and moving into business,
Speaker 2: and I sort of patter myself on the back for
Speaker 2: five years, thinking like I'm never going to have to
Speaker 2: take another step out of my comfort zone, but it
Speaker 2: catches up with you over time you grow into becoming
Speaker 2: comfortable again, and you need to continue to seek out
Speaker 2: those next steps that challenge you. And I'm sure you
Speaker 2: probably didn't imagine that the thail end step would be.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's a huge jump in challenge from a
Speaker 2: difficult thing to something that the globe thinks is impossible quickly.
Speaker 2: Just before we go there, I mentioned before we started
Speaker 2: recording that I'm also a sucker for a niche community
Speaker 2: and just digging really deep into things that day to
Speaker 2: day most people have no idea about. But when you
Speaker 2: start to dig beneath the surface, it's there's a whole
Speaker 2: worldwide community of people who are fascinated by something. And
Speaker 2: I didn't actually think about cave diving as being such
Speaker 2: a specific skill, like separate to just deep sea diving
Speaker 2: or open water diving.
Speaker 1: It's very very specific.
Speaker 2: You all seem to know each other, and it's very technical.
Speaker 2: Like when we're talking caves, it's like at any one time,
Speaker 2: you can't just surface like you're usually in tunnels. And
Speaker 2: I didn't know any ofone would dive into zero visibility,
Speaker 2: and how do you actually become proficient at that, Like,
Speaker 2: how do you graduate from like a normal diver to
Speaker 2: a cave diver.
Speaker 1: How do you even find the caves?
Speaker 3: All these days? It's a very established pathway actually, So
Speaker 3: if you're a comfortable scuba diver and you're looking to
Speaker 3: do something more challenging, then I guess that's the one
Speaker 3: of the next logical steps. So there's an area of
Speaker 3: scuba diving that's become known as technical dive, which is
Speaker 3: basically going beyond the normal recreational dive limits. So, as
Speaker 3: an open water scuba divy, you're told that really the
Speaker 3: maximum depth you should ever go to breathing a tank
Speaker 3: of air is forty meters, maybe even thirty is recommended,
Speaker 3: and you have a single tank on your back, you've
Speaker 3: got two regulators coming off that, and you always dive
Speaker 3: with your dive buddy right next to you. That's the
Speaker 3: sort of mantra don't hold your breath and ascend slowly. Well,
Speaker 3: when you go technical diving, you're looking to extend those limits,
Speaker 3: whether it's in depth or duration or into what we
Speaker 3: call the overhead environment, which might mean inside a shipwreck
Speaker 3: or inside a cave or with an artificial ceiling above you,
Speaker 3: which is a decompression ceiling, which means that you can
Speaker 3: no longer go straight to the surface because you've got
Speaker 3: to do stops on the way up, otherwise you get
Speaker 3: this decompression sickness or the bends, and to do that
Speaker 3: it requires a lot more training, It requires a lot
Speaker 3: more time in the water, and it requires specialty equipment
Speaker 3: and sometimes other gases that you breathe on as well.
Speaker 3: And cave diving, you can train for cave diving the
Speaker 3: same way as you can train for some of these
Speaker 3: other aspects of technical diving, and a lot of cave
Speaker 3: divers sort of gather all these certificates along the way,
Speaker 3: so they become proficient in deeper diving with mixed gases,
Speaker 3: and they might start using rebreathers, which are a different
Speaker 3: type of diving equipment. They certainly have to learn to
Speaker 3: use more than one scuba tank to prolong both their
Speaker 3: duration but also their redundancy, because if you're obviously in
Speaker 3: a cave and you can't go straight back to the surface,
Speaker 3: if one of your pieces of equipment fails, you have
Speaker 3: to have a backup, and you need to back up
Speaker 3: for everything including your lights and your tanks, in your
Speaker 3: ear supply and so forth. So in Australia, the easiest
Speaker 3: way to learn all this is through the Cave Divers
Speaker 3: Association of Australia, and they've got three or four levels
Speaker 3: of training. I say three or four because I should know,
Speaker 3: but it keeps changing, so I think at the moment
Speaker 3: of three, yeah, And it takes maybe four to six
Speaker 3: years probably to go through that training progression quite slow
Speaker 3: and arduous, and you need a lot of time underwater
Speaker 3: in between each of the levels of the courses. And
Speaker 3: because there's so much attention to detail and safety, the
Speaker 3: sport is actually incredibly safe and the risk of a
Speaker 3: bad accident, which means a death really in this sport
Speaker 3: is very very low.
Speaker 2: Indeed, Oh my gosh, I just sort of shiver thinking
Speaker 2: about the idea of having a roof over you so
Speaker 2: you can't just sort of float up to the surface
Speaker 2: if anything happens. And I read quite a few times
Speaker 2: in the book you're mentioning that, you know, keeping your
Speaker 2: cool and not panicking in those situations because you can't
Speaker 2: just sort of rip off your mask and fly to
Speaker 2: the surface is something that also with your training technically
Speaker 2: comes a lot of psychological training to get yourselves ready
Speaker 2: for the situations that you're going too. What mentally keeps
Speaker 2: you going through say a zero visibility you know, tunnel
Speaker 2: that your top and your bottom at both scratching, Like,
Speaker 2: to me, that's just so scary and foreign. What makes
Speaker 2: you keep going? Is it the view that you're going
Speaker 2: to get at the end. Is it the things that
Speaker 2: you've seen at the end of some tunnels that makes
Speaker 2: you go? Or the fact that no other humans been there?
Speaker 2: Is it the adrenaline or the risk? Like what brings
Speaker 2: you back every time?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I guess it's the motivation. Depends on the motivation
Speaker 3: for what you're trying to achieve. You might be in
Speaker 3: there for reasons of exploration, or you might be in
Speaker 3: there because you're doing some work for some scientists, or
Speaker 3: you might be in that situation of a restricted zero
Speaker 3: visibility squeeze as we call them, because you've got to
Speaker 3: go out that way to get home and that way,
Speaker 3: you're pretty motivated. I can tell you to stay calm.
Speaker 3: The way we cope with it is purely through familiarity
Speaker 3: and training and pattern recognition and muscle memory. It's just
Speaker 3: having done this sort of stuff time and time and
Speaker 3: time again, in gradually increasing difficulty circumstances. And that starts
Speaker 3: right at the very beginning with the training. You don't
Speaker 3: actually get to see very much at all during cave
Speaker 3: diving courses because you've either got a blindfold on or
Speaker 3: someone's ripped your mask off face. So, yeah, the courses,
Speaker 3: I mean, the courses are run not in those sort
Speaker 3: of environments. They're running open water sinkholes where you can
Speaker 3: just pop up to the surface. But mentally, I tell you,
Speaker 3: you're in a cave when someone puts this blindfold on
Speaker 3: you and then taps you on the shoulder, which means
Speaker 3: something bad's about to happen to you, and they pull
Speaker 3: your regulator out of your mouth or or you know,
Speaker 3: cut the line that you're following to get out of
Speaker 3: the cave. All this sort of stuff. Then you have
Speaker 3: to fall back on the training that you've been given
Speaker 3: and solve the problem. And if you don't solve the problem,
Speaker 3: you don't pass. And they give you a thing called
Speaker 3: a stress test at the end of the course, which
Speaker 3: sort of throws all these things together in quick succession.
Speaker 3: And I think some people, I mean most people pass
Speaker 3: these things because they're you know, you're pretty comfortable underwater
Speaker 3: by the time you start this sort of course. But
Speaker 3: some people actually go, you know what, this is not
Speaker 3: for me because I don't like the way I'm feeling,
Speaker 3: or I don't like the way this makes me feel.
Speaker 3: So maybe cave diving is not for me. But for
Speaker 3: most people who obviously who pass the courses, they get
Speaker 3: a lot of pleasure out of that environment. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: actually the more advanced you get, the more gnarly some
Speaker 3: of these places are. They can actually be quite fun.
Speaker 3: It's like sort of three dimensional problem solving with your
Speaker 3: eyes closed and the clock tickings. It's kind of weird,
Speaker 3: but it's fun.
Speaker 2: I often say that self awareness is the best tool
Speaker 2: you could possibly develop because it allows you to really
Speaker 2: find what you think is fun and block out what
Speaker 2: anyone else might think, because I'm not sure we would
Speaker 2: all agree that what you're describing is our idea of fun.
Speaker 2: But I guess it only really matters that you think
Speaker 2: it's fun. But as we know now, you've been called
Speaker 2: up on a global government level to use your skills
Speaker 2: outside of just pure leisure. Was Thailand the first time
Speaker 2: that happened? Or can you even dive professionally. Had you
Speaker 2: ever done rescue missions before?
Speaker 3: When you say professional, I guess the answers no, because
Speaker 3: never been paid for anything. But I am involved in
Speaker 3: volunteer cave rescue in Australia and in about the year
Speaker 3: twenty ten I actually started a training course for this
Speaker 3: sort of scenario because I recognized that there was a
Speaker 3: lack of a capability not only in Australia but worldwide
Speaker 3: for rescuing people through an underwater underground body of water.
Speaker 3: And you'd think, well, why would you ever need to
Speaker 3: do that, But you know, as cave divers and cavers,
Speaker 3: we often go to remote caves which we have to
Speaker 3: visit by passing through a sump, a water filled section
Speaker 3: of the cave. For example, out on the nullaboard plane,
Speaker 3: there's a very well known cave called Cocklebitty Cave and
Speaker 3: it's about six kilometers long and most of it is underwater,
Speaker 3: but it's interrupted by two rock chambers a third and
Speaker 3: two thirds along the way. So to cross these rock
Speaker 3: chambers you have to get out of the water and
Speaker 3: carry all your diving equipment across this underwater mountain pretty
Speaker 3: much and then back into the water and then head
Speaker 3: off again to the next one, and then at four
Speaker 3: and a half kilometers in there, you come across the
Speaker 3: second one, which is even bigger and longer, and again
Speaker 3: have to carry all your equipment across it. And these
Speaker 3: places like a huge rock pile, their massive boulders about
Speaker 3: forty meters high that you have to climb up and
Speaker 3: across the top and then down the other side into
Speaker 3: the water. So I was out there with Craig, actually
Speaker 3: Craig Challon, and I said, I remember saying to him,
Speaker 3: what happens if one of us falls over here and
Speaker 3: breaks your leg? Or how would anyone possibly rescue us?
Speaker 3: Because the only way out is back through the water,
Speaker 3: back across the other mountain, and then back through the
Speaker 3: water to the entrance. That seems like an impossible quest.
Speaker 3: So it was kind of selfish self interest that made
Speaker 3: me think, well, we need to we need to get organized,
Speaker 3: because I don't think anyone could rescue us. So I
Speaker 3: went home and we gathered some of the emergency services around,
Speaker 3: the police divers and some very experienced cave divers and
Speaker 3: so forth, and we ran this little weekend of chit
Speaker 3: chat and exercises, scenarios and came away with a kind
Speaker 3: of a coarse structure which I've subsequently taught every year
Speaker 3: since in South Australia, but also taken it over to
Speaker 3: New South Wales and New Zealand. So we'd spend a
Speaker 3: fair bit of time by the Thaire Cave Rescue thinking
Speaker 3: about how we were going to approach this sort of problem.
Speaker 3: But we never anticipated they would be non English speaking
Speaker 3: children at thirteen of them, and in such a difficult cave,
Speaker 3: and people who were not cave divers. I mean, they
Speaker 3: were quite good cavers, the fact that they've gotten themselves
Speaker 3: that far in, but they certainly weren't divers.
Speaker 2: Well, Okay, so I'm so excited about this part of
Speaker 2: the interview. And I've already read the book, so I
Speaker 2: already know a lot of the detail. But what's so
Speaker 2: interesting to me is that it was all over the news.
Speaker 2: Of course, we all knew the fundamental details of the
Speaker 2: thirteen boys getting stuck inside the cave, water coming down,
Speaker 2: they couldn't get back out, and you know, you mentioned
Speaker 2: the whole situation of there was actually no way out,
Speaker 2: accept a way that they couldn't physically get them, And
Speaker 2: then we all knew that the world came together. There
Speaker 2: was a lot of difficult to get in them out,
Speaker 2: but then they got out, and I think a lot
Speaker 2: of us missed a lot of the subtleties in between
Speaker 2: of actually how literally small the chances were of a
Speaker 2: successful removal of the children from that cave were.
Speaker 1: And as I was reading it was just particularly because.
Speaker 2: It was written by you, guys, and written in your
Speaker 2: chronological mindset at each stage of the plan, where you
Speaker 2: you know, the plan you ended up with is definitely
Speaker 2: not the one that you guys first started with. Just
Speaker 2: talk us through it all from your perspective. How did
Speaker 2: you get there? I know, you guys, you know the
Speaker 2: Thai navy seals had had a good go before you
Speaker 2: even arrived, before you were called on, and then there
Speaker 2: was a lot of diplomacy to get there. But there
Speaker 2: were nine chambers, you know. I think we all thought
Speaker 2: that this cave diving again, misunderstood that it was just
Speaker 2: some boys in a cave. But there were like nine
Speaker 2: different chambers to get in, and you're in your wet
Speaker 2: suits and you're dragging all your stuff, and even just
Speaker 2: to get in to find them was a challenge, let alone,
Speaker 2: to then work out how to bring out thirteen of
Speaker 2: them who couldn't dive themselves.
Speaker 1: So take us through it.
Speaker 3: Well, you've painted a pretty good picture. Actually, I don't
Speaker 3: know if I could do much better, but yeah, so,
Speaker 3: I mean, there were a couple of interesting things about
Speaker 3: this cave that made it different to what we would
Speaker 3: consider normally going into ourselves. I would never go into
Speaker 3: a cave that is actively flooding, that's the first thing.
Speaker 3: So the environment itself was potentially quite hazardous. In fact,
Speaker 3: when the first rescuers got on site, they tried to
Speaker 3: dive in. When once they got some divers there, like
Speaker 3: the Thai navy guys, they tried to dive in there.
Speaker 3: It was physically impossible to swim into the flow of
Speaker 3: water appearing from the entrance of the cave. So then
Speaker 3: they called these British guys Rick Stanton and John Valanthine
Speaker 3: because of some local contacts a guy called vern Unsworth,
Speaker 3: a British caver who lived in the area. Rick and
Speaker 3: John are extremely proficient, like they are the go to
Speaker 3: guys for this sort of thing. There are two of
Speaker 3: three or four people in the world who have even
Speaker 3: swum an injured person out through a cave underwater like
Speaker 3: this before, so they had the experience the runs on
Speaker 3: the board, I guess, and also Rick and John in particular,
Speaker 3: they're kind of the rock stars of our sport, if
Speaker 3: you like. They are very very highly regarded, very tough guys,
Speaker 3: very capable.
Speaker 1: Second only to you and Craig.
Speaker 3: Now obviously, well i'd say I would honestly say, we're
Speaker 3: very very long second to these guys. They're just in
Speaker 3: a class of their own, honestly, and I've been on
Speaker 3: expeditions with them, so I can tell your first hand
Speaker 3: that they know they continue to do stuff that I'm
Speaker 3: just in awe of, just way out of my leg
Speaker 3: But anyway, so they arrived on scene and they thought, well,
Speaker 3: we'll give this a go. They tried to get into
Speaker 3: the cave and they were the same They got spat
Speaker 3: out by the strength of the water. So they were
Speaker 3: pretty despondent. They thought, there's no way that anyone's getting
Speaker 3: in there to get these kids, even if they are
Speaker 3: still alive, and the chances are frankly that they've already drowned.
Speaker 3: But they stuck around for a few days. They kept trying,
Speaker 3: and the reins eased off, and gradually the water settled
Speaker 3: to the point where they could actually start to make
Speaker 3: some forward progress, and in what I would say is
Speaker 3: the greatest diving achievement of the modern era from what
Speaker 3: I've seen, they drag these huge sacks full of climbing
Speaker 3: rope with them and laid this rope through the cave
Speaker 3: to where the kids were over the next three to
Speaker 3: four five days, and that would be extremely difficult and
Speaker 3: dangerous dive to do. You can imagine the water is
Speaker 3: like coffee. You cannot see your hand in front of
Speaker 3: your face. You're just pushing and swimming, pulling yourself hand
Speaker 3: over hand, pointing yourself into where the strongest flow is
Speaker 3: coming from. You have no idea where you're going. There's
Speaker 3: so many places in a cave like that that you
Speaker 3: can get trapped or hooked behind a rock in the flow,
Speaker 3: or squashed or whatever. And they would tie off the
Speaker 3: rope every fifty meters or so, so they always had
Speaker 3: this rope they could follow back out find their way home,
Speaker 3: and every now and again they'd pop up into an
Speaker 3: air chamber, from which point they could walk or wade
Speaker 3: or swim on the surface to the next point where
Speaker 3: they had to go back underwater. And as you say that,
Speaker 3: repeated nine times and a very very long way, about
Speaker 3: two point four kilometers in the end, so it's a
Speaker 3: hell of a journey. And then finally popping up into
Speaker 3: Chamber nine, whereby they took their masts off and sniffed
Speaker 3: the air to see if they could smell any sign
Speaker 3: of where if the kids were in there. And Rick
Speaker 3: I remember him telling me that when he first smelt
Speaker 3: the air in that chamber, he thought he'd swum into
Speaker 3: a tomb, because he said the smell was so bad
Speaker 3: that he was expecting to find the bodies of these
Speaker 3: kids floating in the water. So, you know, huge pressure
Speaker 3: on these guys, and that must have been just horrific
Speaker 3: swimming through that water waiting to find all these bodies.
Speaker 3: When suddenly these lights came on up the hill up
Speaker 3: to the right, and one by one, all these boys
Speaker 3: started running down the hill. And you've probably seen that
Speaker 3: amazing bit of video from John Valanthin's head camera when
Speaker 3: he says how many of you are there, and one
Speaker 3: of the boys, Adul, who speaks a little bit of English,
Speaker 3: says thirt. John says, brilliant, you're all here. Rick, being
Speaker 3: a bit of a wise guy says he'd already counted
Speaker 3: them by then he knew there was so that's pretty cool.
Speaker 3: And of course the whole world suddenly went, yeah, they're saved,
Speaker 3: you know, no worries. But anyone who knows anything about
Speaker 3: caving and cave diving went, oh my god, what do
Speaker 3: we doing now?
Speaker 2: Well, I think that's exactly That's it, the fact that
Speaker 2: none of us did know anything about caving and cave diving.
Speaker 2: As soon as we knew they'd been located, we were like,
Speaker 2: it's done, Like you can just sort.
Speaker 1: Of helicopter them out somehow, like drill a hole in
Speaker 1: the you know.
Speaker 2: And as I read the book and I realized just
Speaker 2: how that almost posed a worse problem for the caving
Speaker 2: community and the emergency services, because if there's a dive
Speaker 2: that Navy seals can't do, like who is going to
Speaker 2: do it? I don't think anyone at that time in
Speaker 2: the general public actually understood how technical the problem became,
Speaker 2: and then how impossible it almost was. That if men
Speaker 2: could barely dive in to find the boys, than how
Speaker 2: to even get them out. And I know there was
Speaker 2: an attempt to drill. There were some attempts to drain
Speaker 2: the water out the entrance.
Speaker 1: Elon Musk then.
Speaker 2: Got involved with the submarine thing and the tube that
Speaker 2: he was going to try and put through, And I remember,
Speaker 2: like I've obviously voraciously consumed content on this whole thing
Speaker 2: since reading your book, because I've been so fascinated looking
Speaker 2: at some of the diagrams to scale of the tunnels
Speaker 2: between each chamber. It's just mind boggling to think that
Speaker 2: they got that far in and that you guys then
Speaker 2: had to get every time you went in and out
Speaker 2: was hours, not like twenty minutes or half an hour,
Speaker 2: but hours.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was about a three hour trip each way,
Speaker 3: which got a little bit faster actually as we got
Speaker 3: more practiced in the cave and coming out was slightly
Speaker 3: faster because you were going with the flow, I suppose.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it was a solid day in the cave.
Speaker 3: We're in there for ten or twelve hours each day,
Speaker 3: you know, getting to the kids, looking after them, and
Speaker 3: then coming back out again. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: And so very very few of us, I mean, many
Speaker 2: of us have found our purpose and maybe done something
Speaker 2: quite rewarding with it, but very very few of us
Speaker 2: have actually been called up as the only person in
Speaker 2: the universe who is capable of doing a certain task,
Speaker 2: especially not by a government after the Seals have already
Speaker 2: not been able to do that.
Speaker 1: So what did that feel like for you?
Speaker 3: Well, I was excited, to be honest, because we've done
Speaker 3: all this training. I've been you know, the last eight
Speaker 3: years or so, I've been running these courses thinking, actually,
Speaker 3: we're training for something that will probably never happen. And
Speaker 3: I know Craig and I were secretly hoping that we
Speaker 3: would get called over to Thailand because you felt like
Speaker 3: a fireman who's never put out a fire, you know,
Speaker 3: you want to get a gold And it's funny, I've
Speaker 3: spoken to quite a few soldiers, especially special forces, people
Speaker 3: who are desperately keen to actually test what they've learned
Speaker 3: and their training and just and themselves, I suppose, which
Speaker 3: is hard to understand and maybe even harder to sympathize with,
Speaker 3: but I sort of understand it. Now, You've got these
Speaker 3: skills and you really wonder whether you're up to the
Speaker 3: task yourself, and you want to put them to some good.
Speaker 3: So yeah, we were keen to go and to say
Speaker 3: I'm the only person in the world who could have
Speaker 3: done that. It's a slight exaggeration. There are definitely other
Speaker 3: cave diving anesthetis, but maybe no one else is silly
Speaker 3: enough to get involved. But I just happened to know
Speaker 3: Rick Stanton and some of the other people that were
Speaker 3: already there, So yeah, I was always in the crosshairs,
Speaker 3: I suppose.
Speaker 2: I mean, even still having said that, though, I feel
Speaker 2: like there's still maybe only five or you could count
Speaker 2: them on two.
Speaker 3: It's just not one hand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's why.
Speaker 2: This fascinates me so much, because that very very unique
Speaker 2: intersection between you love the cave diving and your actual
Speaker 2: day job. What a sliding doors moment that that suddenly
Speaker 2: became so relevant for a whole global community and like
Speaker 2: thirteen families. It's just absolutely incredible. And I love how
Speaker 2: you and Craig were actually really honest about from the
Speaker 2: very beginning, how you were kind of angling to figure
Speaker 2: out how you could get over there, because you did,
Speaker 2: we actually have skills that were relevant to offer to
Speaker 2: a very very difficult problem once you actually got there,
Speaker 2: and then I mean, everyone who's interested you can read
Speaker 2: in the book there's a lot about even just diplomatically,
Speaker 2: how you get someone there, and then you get them
Speaker 2: immunity when they're going to go into something so intense
Speaker 2: and high risk. Can you describe the actual tunnel to
Speaker 2: us and like what you actually faced, because again I
Speaker 2: don't think any of us really understood at the time
Speaker 2: that it was hours in, hours out. The only way
Speaker 2: really that was left after exploring all the options was
Speaker 2: to sedate the children, and then it was on your
Speaker 2: shoulders to choose with what how long would that last?
Speaker 2: Would they panic if they woke up? You're sedating them,
Speaker 2: so who's diving them out? All the other divers had
Speaker 2: never injected anyone with anything before, Like my mind, just
Speaker 2: none of us in the public heard really because it
Speaker 2: was just so technical. But like, how did you and
Speaker 2: Crag go about making some order in the chaos?
Speaker 3: Yeah, there were about a million decision points to face,
Speaker 3: and we had a very limited time to get through that.
Speaker 3: The forecasters were saying that we probably had three to
Speaker 3: six days before the monsoon rains would really kick in again.
Speaker 3: And we knew from the experience of the first divers
Speaker 3: on scene that once that happened, and if the monsoon
Speaker 3: came and stayed, then that's it. That's the end of
Speaker 3: the rescue. Because the river floods again, no diving can
Speaker 3: be achieved, and if we can't drill a hole or
Speaker 3: something else, then those kids to have to stay there
Speaker 3: until the end of the monsoon, which is conservatively three
Speaker 3: to four months, probably more like five by the time
Speaker 3: all the water drains away again. And that turned out
Speaker 3: to be the reality of that, by the way, so
Speaker 3: we really had twenty four hours to make a decision
Speaker 3: how we were going to do this. As soon as
Speaker 3: I arrived, there was an assumption and actually quite a
Speaker 3: lot of pressure on me to agree to this anesthetic plan.
Speaker 3: And I had said to Rick on the phone before
Speaker 3: I even left Adelaide, that I think that's impossible. It
Speaker 3: cannot be done. It's never been tried. I can think
Speaker 3: of a million ways those children will die if we
Speaker 3: try and do that. But I'm prepared to come over
Speaker 3: and maybe as a doctor, I can go and look
Speaker 3: after the kids while you guys come up with a
Speaker 3: better plan, or as a cave diver, and maybe I
Speaker 3: can just give you guys a hand in the rescue
Speaker 3: or even in the recovery of the bodies, if that's
Speaker 3: what's needed, because the kids still had to come out
Speaker 3: one way or the other back to their families. So
Speaker 3: on that basis, we went over and as I say,
Speaker 3: as soon as we hit the ground, everyone's going, right, well,
Speaker 3: how are you going to anesetize and what are you
Speaker 3: going to do? I'm not doing it. I'm not even
Speaker 3: talking about it until I've looked at what else is
Speaker 3: going on, until I've seen the cave for myself. And
Speaker 3: of course I'd been racking my brains for the last
Speaker 3: twenty four hours anyway, thinking about how I would anesthetize them,
Speaker 3: and getting as many opinions from friends and colleagues about
Speaker 3: that in the meantime, so I had a bit of
Speaker 3: an idea what I was going to do if it
Speaker 3: came to that, But for me, that was off the
Speaker 3: table until it was absolutely the last resort. And you've
Speaker 3: mentioned all the plans around water pumping and draining the
Speaker 3: cave and drilling and all these sorts of things. I
Speaker 3: had to be sure my own mind that none of
Speaker 3: those things were possible. I had to be sure that
Speaker 3: it wasn't possible to teach the kids how to know
Speaker 3: just the rudimentary diving skills we could safely escort them
Speaker 3: out awake. I had to be sure that we couldn't
Speaker 3: maybe just stock up the larder with food in there
Speaker 3: for them and let them sit there for three months,
Speaker 3: if that was the safer option. And so my first
Speaker 3: request or demand really was that I had to dive
Speaker 3: the cave myself and have a look at it and
Speaker 3: see the kids for myself, see the environment they were in,
Speaker 3: see how difficult the cave was, and that would just
Speaker 3: help me get my head around all this stuff. And
Speaker 3: that's all I had to do, really, to be very
Speaker 3: sure in my own mind that there was no way
Speaker 3: these kids were coming out any other way than anesthetized,
Speaker 3: and that they would not survive more than a few
Speaker 3: weeks in there without food and proper medical care and
Speaker 3: so forth. And not only that, but there were four
Speaker 3: Thay Navy military people in there with the kids, and
Speaker 3: they were in exactly the same boat. If the kids
Speaker 3: were not rescued, that meant those four men would also
Speaker 3: perish in there. So it was a bit of responsibility
Speaker 3: to do something. And I actually still believed, really right
Speaker 3: until the last child was out, that this would not work,
Speaker 3: and I believed it with all my heart. To be honest,
Speaker 3: I'd still thought there's no chance that this plan can
Speaker 3: conceivably be successful, and that any of these kids could survive,
Speaker 3: let alone all of them. And the only reason I
Speaker 3: managed to push your head with the plan was that
Speaker 3: the alternative seemed even worse to me, and that was
Speaker 3: to leave these kids to die very slow and lingering death.
Speaker 3: And I couldn't walk away from them with that, you know,
Speaker 3: on the card. So we had to try it. And
Speaker 3: I thought that, well, at least if the kids die
Speaker 3: under our care, they'll be anesthetized and asleep when it happens.
Speaker 3: So when you put it in those sort of binary terms,
Speaker 3: it seemed like a pretty clear choice. You know, it
Speaker 3: was a bad outcome for me if we went with
Speaker 3: that plan, but either way, the kids would be dead,
Speaker 3: and we forget that.
Speaker 2: You know, I think the images that you get in
Speaker 2: your mind are of them with light and heat and
Speaker 2: dry flaws.
Speaker 1: But when I was reading through the fact.
Speaker 2: That they like to get food in someone actually has
Speaker 2: to dive it in that three hour trek, like there's
Speaker 2: no convenient way to actually get stuff to them and
Speaker 2: goods to them. Like there's just so many things that
Speaker 2: I just couldn't unless you've read the book. And I
Speaker 2: highly recommend everyone does, because showing how you eliminated each
Speaker 2: option was actually fascinating to read how technical then the
Speaker 2: ultimate solution did become. And also I'm so fascinated by
Speaker 2: self doubt and how psychologically how much of a barrier
Speaker 2: that can be to us in our day to day lives,
Speaker 2: but let alone in a situation where the outcome that
Speaker 2: you're doubting is actually fatal for people, you know, children.
Speaker 2: I just don't know how you stayed focused for such
Speaker 2: a huge task with so much weight on your shoulders.
Speaker 2: And I've heard you speak about how what you actually
Speaker 2: had to do with the children to test their masks
Speaker 2: and stuff that is, by any normal standards in any
Speaker 2: normal situation, counterintuitive to anything that you would do for
Speaker 2: someone's well being, But it's what you had to do.
Speaker 2: So talk us through the sort of mental challenge you
Speaker 2: went through in coming to that plan and then actually
Speaker 2: executing it, not knowing each day that any of them
Speaker 2: had survived until you got out at the end of
Speaker 2: the day. Like if anyone doesn't know, doctor Harris was
Speaker 2: in Chamber nine with the children all day and the
Speaker 2: other divers were diving the children out sedated. So do
Speaker 2: you want to maybe explain that process as well, so
Speaker 2: that people know how it happened with the other divers
Speaker 2: sort of taking one child.
Speaker 3: There are some really interesting moral dilemmas in this whole
Speaker 3: story which I've become a bit fascinated with actually, and
Speaker 3: how we you know, again sliding door moments. You know,
Speaker 3: if things had gone differently, we would have faced some
Speaker 3: really awful moral outcomes, I think. But anyway, the actual
Speaker 3: process of anesthetizing these children was that I would go
Speaker 3: to Chamber nine with the four British divers who were
Speaker 3: going to actually physically swim the children out. They would
Speaker 3: take charge of one child each. I would call each
Speaker 3: child down one at a time. They would already be
Speaker 3: dressed in a wetsuit. They'd come down and sit on
Speaker 3: my lap in the water. Was at the base of
Speaker 3: a very steep slope, so I was in water up
Speaker 3: to my lower chest, I guess, and I couldn't really
Speaker 3: get much higher out of the water than that, So
Speaker 3: I'd cock a knee up and they would sit on
Speaker 3: my knee with their top half of their body up
Speaker 3: out of the water, and I would show them the
Speaker 3: needle and syringe and I would then inject them in
Speaker 3: the leg with ketamine, the anesthetic drug, and it would
Speaker 3: take about five minutes for that to work, and they'd
Speaker 3: slowly get a bit knotty and then get limp and
Speaker 3: become like a rag doll and fall asleep, and so
Speaker 3: I'd support their head and their face to make sure
Speaker 3: their airway was okay whilst that happened, and then the
Speaker 3: British diver would bring over the full face masks that
Speaker 3: we were going to use to make sure that their
Speaker 3: face and airway stayed dry during the diving extraction, and
Speaker 3: then we'd try and put that on the kid's head,
Speaker 3: which is actually quite hard to do when the kids
Speaker 3: will floppy like a rag doll. So we had a
Speaker 3: few issues with that, and a couple of kids sort
Speaker 3: of ended up flopping into the water by accident. And
Speaker 3: you know, it's not even funny, but it is, well,
Speaker 3: that kind of is, but it wasn't you know, I
Speaker 3: agree entirely. I mean, it was just a circus and
Speaker 3: we were sort of giggling at times because it was
Speaker 3: just so awful and it just seems so hopeless. It's
Speaker 3: like a movie of how not to give an anesthetic basically.
Speaker 3: But anyway, with us. So we get the mask on,
Speaker 3: and we do the straps up so tight because we're
Speaker 3: terrified that these masks would get dislodged or bumped with
Speaker 3: all the stalic tights and projections in the cave, and
Speaker 3: the poor kids ended up with squashed noses and I
Speaker 3: think some blood noses and things. But anyway, they were safe, obviously.
Speaker 3: And then once the mask was on, then I would
Speaker 3: do this first test. And I remember very clearly with
Speaker 3: the first boy that we did this too, getting him
Speaker 3: and just pushing his face down into the water for
Speaker 3: just a few seconds, and then lifting him up again
Speaker 3: and expecting the mask to be half full of water
Speaker 3: and seeing that, okay, it's still dry, and so try
Speaker 3: again for maybe twenty seconds, and then finally leaving him
Speaker 3: lying face down in the water. And I remember very
Speaker 3: clearly the feeling of this is not what I'm supposed
Speaker 3: to be doing as a doctor. You know, I feel
Speaker 3: like I'm basically ethanazing this child. It's like drowning a
Speaker 3: kitten or something. It just felt it felt awful and
Speaker 3: so so wrong. But the kid be bubbling away happily,
Speaker 3: you know, the bubbles coming out of the face mask
Speaker 3: as they should and so the British dive would then
Speaker 3: go off and get his own equipment ready, and whilst
Speaker 3: he was doing that, I'd get the kid make the
Speaker 3: final preparations by tying the kid's hands behind their back
Speaker 3: with a carabine a clipped to two cable ties, and
Speaker 3: then wrapping their feet together with a bungee cord. And
Speaker 3: the idea of that is to make them into the
Speaker 3: most streamlined kind of dart that we could, so they'd
Speaker 3: be easy to push through the water and through these
Speaker 3: tight restrictions in the cave. Because if their arms were
Speaker 3: flailing about then obviously they would get injured or tangled
Speaker 3: in the ropes or the projections in the cave. But
Speaker 3: more importantly, if they suddenly woke up underwater water, then
Speaker 3: they might reach up and rip their mask off, or
Speaker 3: even more worryingly, do the same to the rescue diver
Speaker 3: and drown the rescue diver. Because you can imagine if
Speaker 3: you're in the tight confines of a very restricted part
Speaker 3: of the tunnel, you can't see anything at all, and
Speaker 3: suddenly this kid starts waking up and thrashing around, you're
Speaker 3: both going to end up dying. There's no way that
Speaker 3: one of these British guys was going to just abandon
Speaker 3: a child. You know, they would do everything in their
Speaker 3: power to try and rescue them, and that would almost
Speaker 3: certainly end in the death of both of them. So,
Speaker 3: you know, the first rule of any rescuers to protect
Speaker 3: the rescuers number one, and then the victims come a
Speaker 3: close second, but it has to be in that order,
Speaker 3: because without the rescuers, you can't do anything for the
Speaker 3: other boys. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, What were the in the sort of Gnarlia Settler
Speaker 2: that you caught it nally before the narliest section of
Speaker 2: the dive?
Speaker 1: Like how tight are we talking? And how rough?
Speaker 2: Like I think we have this idea of like a
Speaker 2: tube that's smooth, but I'm sure it actually wasn't like.
Speaker 3: That at all. Yeah, the type parts of the cave
Speaker 3: were different configurations. Most of them were quite wide but
Speaker 3: very flat, so maybe I don't know, you know, this
Speaker 3: sort of height you could fit your head its head
Speaker 3: and chest through it and then you would be scraping
Speaker 3: with your back and your chest and you would have
Speaker 3: to wriggle, you know, to push yourself through them. So
Speaker 3: they were pretty tight. Like if I was any bigger,
Speaker 3: I would struggle Fortunately the floor of the cave was mud,
Speaker 3: so that actually works in your favor because you can
Speaker 3: scrape a bit of a trench through, and the more
Speaker 3: times people go through, the easier it gets.
Speaker 1: So you'd have to push the child through first, or
Speaker 1: you'd go through and then pull them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or maybe have them alongside you. But sometimes there
Speaker 3: was only one spot in that wide what we call
Speaker 3: a flattener, only one spot where you could fit through,
Speaker 3: and the rope wouldn't necessarily follow that part of the cave,
Speaker 3: of course, so the rope might be out of arm's length,
Speaker 3: and then you'd have to feel out with your other
Speaker 3: arm to find where that hole is. And as I say,
Speaker 3: it's like a blind three dimensional problem solving exercise, which
Speaker 3: is fine when you're by yourself and you've got time
Speaker 3: on your side, but when you've got someone else to
Speaker 3: worry about, and knowing that the anesthetic will be wearing
Speaker 3: off and you've got to keep moving, the kids getting
Speaker 3: colder every minute they're in there. There's a lot of
Speaker 3: pressure on these British guys to do this, and a
Speaker 3: huge amount of mental strain and stress on them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, And they had to inject the kids a
Speaker 2: couple of times to make it last, didn't they? Because
Speaker 2: the extraction was so long, the sedatives wouldn't actually last
Speaker 2: long enough, would they.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, ketamine is a drug that we use quite
Speaker 3: a lot in ana seesure and especially in emergency situations
Speaker 3: because it's very forgiving in many ways. But giving it
Speaker 3: as an intramuscular injection is a bit unusual, not unheard of,
Speaker 3: but a bit unusual. But giving it repeated doses as
Speaker 3: an intramuscular injection is just about unheard of. And so
Speaker 3: I had no idea really how much to give, how
Speaker 3: often it would need to be given. There's really no
Speaker 3: recipe for what we did, so I just had to
Speaker 3: best guess it, really, and just as best we could
Speaker 3: as we went along. Now, of course, these other divers
Speaker 3: aren't medical people, and so they took on an enormous responsibility.
Speaker 3: I mean, they never would have looked after an unconscious
Speaker 3: person on the surface, let alone underwater when you can't
Speaker 3: see the patient. So, you know, imagine if I asked
Speaker 3: you to do this right now in a you know,
Speaker 3: if I turn the lights out and said, right, there's
Speaker 3: an unconscious person there, just look after them for three hours,
Speaker 3: keep them alive and if they start to wriggle, inject
Speaker 3: them in the leg. They'll give you one little torch.
Speaker 3: It can shine on them briefly while you do the injection.
Speaker 1: Let alone, if we were in a tunnel.
Speaker 3: It was a big ask on these British guys, which
Speaker 3: says a lot about the quality of these blokes, which
Speaker 3: is why I was alluding to their excellent natures early on.
Speaker 2: You know, one thing I did love about reading the
Speaker 2: book was how much of you guys and the other
Speaker 2: personalities you injected into the story as well. Like it was,
Speaker 2: it's a terrible, overwhelming, all consuming experience, but you have
Speaker 2: to be able to laugh at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: like you guys have to be there to make each
Speaker 2: other sane through If a child like you know, slips
Speaker 2: and slides on their wetsuit down into the water, like
Speaker 2: you have to laugh because what else can you do.
Speaker 1: And I love that you all had banter with each
Speaker 1: other and we're each other.
Speaker 3: A hard time. That's very much. That's very much for
Speaker 3: our benefit, that kind of black humor, I think, to
Speaker 3: keep the positivity to keep going back another day and
Speaker 3: another day after that. You know, you had to jolly
Speaker 3: yourself up a bit with some kind of technique.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And why I love going through these kind of events
Speaker 1: is that in hindsight, of course it all worked out.
Speaker 2: We know that there was a happy ending, but you
Speaker 2: didn't know that at the time. Like each day when
Speaker 2: you came out, yes, you got one day closer, but
Speaker 2: there was another whole twelve to fifteen hours twice and
Speaker 2: then another time for you to get through. So when
Speaker 2: you first came out and realized it had worked for
Speaker 2: four of them, did you have any time to think
Speaker 2: or celebrate that before you were like back the next
Speaker 2: day or no?
Speaker 3: Not really. We had to go straight into debriefing meetings
Speaker 3: as soon as we got out of the cave after
Speaker 3: that first rescue day, And obviously we found out the
Speaker 3: first four boys had survived, which was great news. But
Speaker 3: actually that night I was more frightened, I think than
Speaker 3: any other time during the rescue. I sort of got
Speaker 3: it into my head that I don't know how we
Speaker 3: got away with day one, but tomorrow this is definitely
Speaker 3: going to all come unraveled, and we're going to be
Speaker 3: found out to be the fraudsters that I know we are.
Speaker 3: You know, I just was so convinced this plan couldn't work.
Speaker 3: And so that night, you know, I virtually had no sleep.
Speaker 3: It was raining all night, so I was listening to
Speaker 3: the rain on the roof of the hotel, thinking we
Speaker 3: might not even be getting back in to see that
Speaker 3: boys again. And you know, that was really tough each
Speaker 3: day saying goodbye to the remaining boys and those military guys,
Speaker 3: thinking if it rains tonight, you guys are dead. We're
Speaker 3: going back to our hotel. We might never see you again.
Speaker 3: I felt very guilty leaving each day, I have to say,
Speaker 3: and I.
Speaker 2: Can't imagine the exhaustion you would have had as well,
Speaker 2: just with the moral and ethical and physical questions that
Speaker 2: are going through your head the whole entire time. But
Speaker 2: also I think we trauma is kind of not easy
Speaker 2: to deal with, of course, but if you can rip
Speaker 2: a band aid, there's something to that. Whereas you guys
Speaker 2: had to just sit there for fifteen hours and wait,
Speaker 2: there was no just push the boy through the tubernis
Speaker 2: out the other side. It was such a long process
Speaker 2: of you waiting with no answers.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I found the swim out of the cave
Speaker 3: each day quite a good opportunity to kind of try
Speaker 3: and relax and just say, okay, well, look I'm in
Speaker 3: a cave, I'm diving. This is what I enjoyed doing.
Speaker 3: I'll just follow this rope out And that wasn't technically
Speaker 3: too terrible for us, and going with the flow of
Speaker 3: the water was actually quite relaxing. So I found those
Speaker 3: swims out with my own thoughts, because there's no point
Speaker 3: diving with anyone else in those conditions. They just get
Speaker 3: in your way, so you're completely by yourself for those
Speaker 3: few hours swimming out, and I found that actually quite
Speaker 3: relaxing strangely, and helped me like a deep yeah, get
Speaker 3: some mental energy back, thinking about okay, what do we do?
Speaker 3: What could we do better? I wonder if any of
Speaker 3: them are alive, but we'll soon find out, I suppose.
Speaker 2: So. One of the things that stood out so much
Speaker 2: as well is just the rellis of those young boys,
Speaker 2: like they were so young, some of them, but every
Speaker 2: time you would come out of the water, my heart
Speaker 2: would just smile reading about how they would greet you
Speaker 2: with such happy, positive and optimistic smiles. And the coach
Speaker 2: was so careful to look after their well being. And
Speaker 2: then the Navy Seals agreed to just sit with them
Speaker 2: until you know, they weren't leaving until the boys left.
Speaker 1: What were some of your biggest.
Speaker 2: Takeaways on sort of humanity and the fact that the
Speaker 2: global community can come together to pull something like this off.
Speaker 2: I imagine it kind of changed your life in how
Speaker 2: you see life and people and connection and community.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you've summed it up just there. I mean to
Speaker 3: arrive on this scene with people from every country you
Speaker 3: can imagine being represented in some form, whether it's their
Speaker 3: military or some volunteers, or some equipment being there on
Speaker 3: site that's been donated or sent over. Plus the thousands
Speaker 3: and thousands of tied people on site, from people cooking
Speaker 3: food for all the volunteers were handing out clothing or
Speaker 3: rubber boots or hats or umbrellas or you name it.
Speaker 3: You could get a free haircut there outside the cave
Speaker 3: entrance if you had the time. Unfortunately, there's some beautiful
Speaker 3: typhood being cooked there and these huge woks, but we
Speaker 3: didn't have time to even see any of that. It
Speaker 3: was like a sideshow ali at the agricultural shows. It's
Speaker 3: just people with all these stools and you know, this
Speaker 3: sort of happy atmosphere it was an amazing place. I
Speaker 3: only got stall. It was like that. It was I
Speaker 3: only got to very briefly walk around at once and
Speaker 3: just to see what was going on. But it was
Speaker 3: so colorful and vibrant, you know. But yeah, and then
Speaker 3: it was back into the meetings or planning or you know,
Speaker 3: sorting out equipment and stuff. But it was kind of
Speaker 3: a cool atmosphere there, and overwhelmingly this feeling of community
Speaker 3: that all these people were there for one reason, one
Speaker 3: reason only. It was extraordinary thing to be a part of. Actually,
Speaker 3: it was a real privilege.
Speaker 2: I love that you guys have maintained your connection with
Speaker 2: the boys as well, and that you went back to
Speaker 2: Thailand to see quite a few of them.
Speaker 3: I think I think we saw eight of them, including
Speaker 3: the coach, and that was amazing obviously to see how
Speaker 3: they're doing and to meet some of their parents, because
Speaker 3: we never even saw the parents while we were over
Speaker 3: there the first time, which brings me to one of
Speaker 3: those moral dilemmas, you know, about informed consent, both for
Speaker 3: the boys and for their parents. And I'm kind of
Speaker 3: glad I never got to talk to the parents beforehand,
Speaker 3: because what possible way could I frame that conversation with them.
Speaker 3: You know, here's a plan. I think it's got one
Speaker 3: hundred percent failure rate. But we're but but it seems
Speaker 3: better than leaving them to die of illness, starvation, or exposure.
Speaker 3: What do you want me to do? I mean, how
Speaker 3: could you ask a parent to make that decision? It's impossible,
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 1: But I love that you asked the boys, though.
Speaker 3: Well, we told them what the plan was. I don't
Speaker 3: know whether we were really seeking their permission. But having
Speaker 3: said that, you know, the last thing I would have
Speaker 3: wanted to do, in fact, I don't think I could
Speaker 3: have done, would be to drag a child, kicking and screaming,
Speaker 3: to the water's edge, plunge a needle into him, and
Speaker 3: then basically a soul him in that way. I couldn't
Speaker 3: have done that, So I had to give them sufficient
Speaker 3: confidence such that they would comply. I guess for my
Speaker 3: own sake. I mean, I couldn't. You couldn't do that
Speaker 3: to a child if they were resisting. It was hard
Speaker 3: enough to do it with someone who was being nice
Speaker 3: to you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it seemed like they all had really lovely
Speaker 2: memories of your anethetist banter and just sort of slowly,
Speaker 2: you know, going off into another world. How you guys
Speaker 2: talk to kind of fill the space and make them
Speaker 2: feel really comfortable. I was reading that some of the
Speaker 2: boys when you asked what they remember, they were like, doctor, brigard,
Speaker 2: job job job, job, job, job.
Speaker 1: That's cute.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they tease. They did tease me a bit when
Speaker 3: we finally met up with them that, oh hello, hello,
Speaker 3: olch you know.
Speaker 1: Job job next.
Speaker 2: Did you have much dead time while you were waiting
Speaker 2: between sending the boys off or you were just sitting
Speaker 2: in the cave waiting.
Speaker 3: I tried to send them out at about forty five
Speaker 3: minute intervals because we had to give the dive downstream
Speaker 3: in the other chambers time to process them and send
Speaker 3: them on their way and red anesthetize them and sometimes
Speaker 3: unpack them and repackage them in their gear to move
Speaker 3: them through some of the dry chambers and things. So
Speaker 3: I didn't want to overwhelm those guys, so we tried
Speaker 3: to space them out. But it seemed to work out
Speaker 3: at forty five minutes to an hour, so there wasn't
Speaker 3: a lot of time to relax in between. I mean,
Speaker 3: we gradually we're getting colder and colder during the day.
Speaker 3: Of course, we're in the water for all of that time,
Speaker 3: and the water was twenty three degrees, but we only
Speaker 3: had had thin tropical wetsuits on, so it was pretty shivery.
Speaker 3: By the end of the last boys, I'm pretty ready
Speaker 3: to get going as soon as the last kid's done.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. Well, I just I could talk to
Speaker 1: you about this forever. It is so so fascinating to me.
Speaker 2: But I obviously appreciate this is probably not the first
Speaker 2: time you've talked about it in this level of detail.
Speaker 3: No, it's become a bit of a thing, but which
Speaker 3: has changed my life, you know, honestly in so many
Speaker 3: ways that I never expected when I attended this rescue.
Speaker 3: I can honest say that Craig and I went over
Speaker 3: there we looked at it as a job that we
Speaker 3: could get involved with, that we could contribute to, and
Speaker 3: it was a bit of an adventure. But we had
Speaker 3: no understanding of the size of the story and no
Speaker 3: expectation that that was the case. And I was quite
Speaker 3: appalled actually when I got home and found that there
Speaker 3: was all this media attention and focus on us, I
Speaker 3: just really well, I actually did quite a good job
Speaker 3: at hiding from all the media for at least sort
Speaker 3: of two to three months, and it was only because
Speaker 3: of the South Australian of the Year and Western Australian
Speaker 3: of the Year awards that we received that we started
Speaker 3: to feel like we couldn't really hide from it much
Speaker 3: longer because it would seem a bit rude if we've
Speaker 3: been giving it an award and we wouldn't even talk
Speaker 3: about it, So we kind of had to roll over
Speaker 3: in the end.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that's also another interesting thing, and that
Speaker 2: was my next question for you. Was after an event
Speaker 2: like that, one of the other books that I have
Speaker 2: read many many times is called Emergency Sex, and it's
Speaker 2: got nothing to do with sex. It's just obviously guess
Speaker 2: your attention out four different UN workers who go on
Speaker 2: these expeditions rescue missions in all the major war zones
Speaker 2: of sort of the last twenty years, Rwanda, Cambodia, Somalia,
Speaker 2: and how they just spend their whole trip trying to
Speaker 2: get to safety, and then they get to safety and
Speaker 2: they can't deal with normal life, so they find another
Speaker 2: war zone and they all keep finding each other thinking.
Speaker 1: What are you doing back here? We just got you
Speaker 1: home safely? Was it hard for you then to go back.
Speaker 2: To normalcy after, you know, back to Little Adelaide, after
Speaker 2: this global scale operation and that adrenaline.
Speaker 3: It wasn't really because, as I said, I just put it.
Speaker 3: I was able to put it in the workbox, to
Speaker 3: say this is you know, this kid's my next patient. Okay,
Speaker 3: this is a slightly strange operating theater and the risks
Speaker 3: are a bit higher than usual for one of my
Speaker 3: awn anesthetics. But nonetheless, that's the way I compartmentalized it
Speaker 3: end my brain and the way I dealt with it,
Speaker 3: I think. So when I came home, I thought, well,
Speaker 3: I'll probably I might give myself a long weekend and
Speaker 3: then back to work. And you know, and that's the
Speaker 3: way I was to work. Well, I got home on
Speaker 3: the Friday night, and I thought, I'll take Monday off,
Speaker 3: treat myself to a long weekend, and then go back
Speaker 3: to work on Tuesday. Stop it. And you know, that's
Speaker 3: just the way I was thinking about it all. I
Speaker 3: didn't think it was that big a deal, honestly, and
Speaker 3: I thought we'll probably get a nice letter from you know,
Speaker 3: maybe the premiere or something saying good job.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, you but the Australians.
Speaker 3: It just went mental. Well yeah, and all of that
Speaker 3: was completely unexpected.
Speaker 1: But very very well deserved.
Speaker 2: I've been shared Australians of the Year last year. You
Speaker 2: both Order of Australian Metal. You're an OAM now, is
Speaker 2: that right?
Speaker 1: That's right, you're a royal. I kind of remember what
Speaker 1: the tie some super long title, but it's very fancy.
Speaker 3: It's very cool. It is very nice and you get
Speaker 3: a sash, so that's good.
Speaker 1: I've read about the sash.
Speaker 2: I was like, that is so regal and tie of
Speaker 2: them to do. And then the aneth Tist British organization
Speaker 2: thing that was named after the guy who did all the.
Speaker 3: Test about yes, the Edgar Pesk Citation, which is my
Speaker 3: favorite award of all of them actually because Edgar Pesk
Speaker 3: was a physiologist in the Second World War who decided
Speaker 3: he was asked to prove that the May West life
Speaker 3: jackets would support an emmon who had gone down in
Speaker 3: the English Channel if he was unconscious, to prove that
Speaker 3: these life jackets would keep his head out of the water.
Speaker 3: So he said, well, the only way to prove that
Speaker 3: is to have someone anesthetized in a pool wearing the
Speaker 3: life jacket, and of course I can't ask anyone to
Speaker 3: do that, so I'll have to get myself anesthetized and
Speaker 3: get in the pool. So he is the first and
Speaker 3: only person that I'm aware of prior to this rescue
Speaker 3: who has been anesthetized and then intentionally put in water,
Speaker 3: and so he has always been a hero of mine,
Speaker 3: and that kind of has come the full circle that
Speaker 3: I ended up getting that award, which was really nice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you are now a hero to so many. Honestly,
Speaker 2: I know, I love how humble you both are about
Speaker 2: the whole thing, and the way you write about it
Speaker 2: is just as if it's like I mean, you express
Speaker 2: the grandiosity of it and the challenge, but in a
Speaker 2: way that makes you guys seem like just so humble
Speaker 2: about your role in the whole thing, even though you
Speaker 2: are actual Australian hero.
Speaker 3: Well, I think cave divers like problem solving, and all
Speaker 3: the guys there, the British and the European cave dives,
Speaker 3: they're all the same. They just looked on this as
Speaker 3: a gigantic puzzle to somehow solve and to work out
Speaker 3: how best to do it. And fortunately for us it
Speaker 3: seemed to work. I still don't really understand how, but
Speaker 3: I'm happy that.
Speaker 1: You're happy to go with it.
Speaker 2: So the final section is called playta And I don't
Speaker 2: imagine that you actually have any time for any real
Speaker 2: pursuits outside of being an actual doctor and an ethetist
Speaker 2: as well as a cave diver and now in Australian
Speaker 2: of the Year.
Speaker 1: But what do you now do for fun?
Speaker 2: Is there anything when you unwrap Harry doctor, Harry, cave diver,
Speaker 2: Harry all the roles that you wear and Harry dad
Speaker 2: and Harry family man, like, is there anything that you
Speaker 2: do that's.
Speaker 1: Just for your own joy?
Speaker 3: Do you have well Flix, I have to see. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: I do like on Netflix. I mean, I'm a very
Speaker 3: keen photographer and underwater videographer. So my secret path is
Speaker 3: that i want to make documentaries about our adventures. And
Speaker 3: I've actually been well, I've been trying for about ten years,
Speaker 3: but of course had many many rejection slips. But the
Speaker 3: great thing about this adventure is that it's opened a
Speaker 3: few doors for me in that regard, And until COVID started,
Speaker 3: things were actually starting to progress quite well with a
Speaker 3: concept for a documentary series. So I'm that's still on
Speaker 3: the table, but has just had to be put to
Speaker 3: bed for a little while until the nasty virus goes away.
Speaker 3: The other exciting thing that I've just started is I
Speaker 3: had my first fora into motor sport yesterday. I've bought
Speaker 3: an old I've bought an Old nineteen sixty eight mini,
Speaker 3: and yesterday I did my first hill climb event in it.
Speaker 3: Absolutely loved it.
Speaker 1: Oh that's so much fun. See.
Speaker 2: I love again that between doctoring and water related things,
Speaker 2: you have another hobby.
Speaker 1: This is amazing.
Speaker 3: Well, my wife, actually I meously does worry about my
Speaker 3: cave diving, obviously, especially when I go away out of
Speaker 3: out of range on some major expeditions. She does worry
Speaker 3: a bit, and strangely, yesterday she came to this track
Speaker 3: to watch me, you know, just in case I've rolled
Speaker 3: the car or did something crazy. She said, you know,
Speaker 3: this is so much better than cave do I'm not
Speaker 3: worried about you at all doing this. You compare it
Speaker 3: because I can see you. I can see you in
Speaker 3: this funny old little car. It doesn't seem to go
Speaker 3: very fast.
Speaker 2: And with the documentaries, I saw that James Cameron wrote
Speaker 2: your forward, so I feel like you've got more than
Speaker 2: a good foot in the.
Speaker 1: Door in that department.
Speaker 3: Yes, it was quite a nice I'd worked with him
Speaker 3: on a couple of little things. Well, he was working
Speaker 3: on some very big things. I had very minor roles
Speaker 3: in them. But so I had met him before because
Speaker 3: he's actually a very passionate ocean explorer himself and he
Speaker 3: loves everything about diving. So he was very generous to
Speaker 3: actually give me a call after the rescue and say
Speaker 3: well done, and gave me some advice about the media
Speaker 3: and so forth, and so I thought, well, maybe I
Speaker 3: could just ask a favor back to him and asked
Speaker 3: him to write the forward. And then I've just interviewed
Speaker 3: him for my podcast. So no, so that is super exciting.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Well again, Okay, Also, guys, he's also managed to squeeze
Speaker 2: in a podcast on the side. I don't know how,
Speaker 2: but this is absolutely amazing. Is that what your next
Speaker 2: big goal is? Documentaries?
Speaker 1: Podcast?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Well, I am quite enjoying all the media side
Speaker 3: of stuff now, and doing a podcast has been a
Speaker 3: real challenge. Yeah. I'm quite a nervous interviewer. I don't
Speaker 3: like the way I talk, of course, and like nobody does.
Speaker 3: And I I'm an R all the time, but I
Speaker 3: think it's really good for you to do stuff like
Speaker 3: this too. If you think you're no good at something,
Speaker 3: the best way to fix it is to just do it.
Speaker 3: And so in the COVID madness, so I was sitting
Speaker 3: around thinking, Ah, I think I'll just do a podcast,
Speaker 3: see how that goes. And had I known how much
Speaker 3: work it was, Sarah, as you probably already could have
Speaker 3: told me, maybe I wouldn't have rushed into it. But
Speaker 3: I've done twelve. Now can I give it a plug?
Speaker 3: It's called Real Risk.
Speaker 1: Oh please do.
Speaker 3: I basically talk to adventurers about risk taking and how
Speaker 3: they perceive risks and things and how they manage them.
Speaker 2: Oh. I actually, I'm just going to binge. I'm not
Speaker 2: going to sleep tonight. This is all I'm going to
Speaker 2: listen to.
Speaker 3: Start with number twelve. James Cameron.
Speaker 1: Oh he is the most recent one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Oh wonderful?
Speaker 2: Is that? One of the weirdest things that happened afterwards?
Speaker 2: Like who else called you that you were just like,
Speaker 2: how do you know?
Speaker 3: OK? The weirdest thing that well, not quite the weirdest
Speaker 3: thing that happened was meeting Harry and Meghan at Admiral
Speaker 3: t House in Sydney.
Speaker 1: Photo is it?
Speaker 3: There is? Craig and I are just having a stubby
Speaker 3: and we're chadding to Harry and Meghan. There we are,
Speaker 3: and they're just like, oh, hi guys, how are.
Speaker 1: How you doing?
Speaker 3: Harry said, I love afternoon tea in Australia. You get
Speaker 3: a beer.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, what an incredible journey. I just have
Speaker 2: so much admiration for you. Very very last question. I'm
Speaker 2: so grateful for your time, but I would love to
Speaker 2: know three interesting things about you that don't normally come
Speaker 2: up in interviews because I feel like you get interviewed
Speaker 2: a lot, but people would ask a lot of the
Speaker 2: same questions. So what stuff that doesn't come up that's
Speaker 2: interesting about you? And you can't use the bird thing
Speaker 2: because I already said.
Speaker 3: That all right, Well, I think the motorsport's a new
Speaker 3: thing because that only started yesterday.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exclusive content everything.
Speaker 3: And I don't I'm at least what would she say? Well,
Speaker 3: snore like yeah, snore like a train, like a train.
Speaker 3: In fact, last night she said, do you remember me
Speaker 3: waking you up and poking you and telling you to
Speaker 3: roll over? Because I thought you were just about to
Speaker 3: stop breathing. I do love my food, and so I
Speaker 3: tend to get a bit fat if I'm not if
Speaker 3: I haven't got a project. Sometimes I get into running,
Speaker 3: and I got up to like thirty three k's run
Speaker 3: like I've just got OCD. I think, whatever I do,
Speaker 3: I'll throw myself into it, and then I suddenly get
Speaker 3: sick of it and I'll never run again. And that's
Speaker 3: what that's the phase I'm in right now. We're not
Speaker 3: running phase.
Speaker 1: I love how they're in Craigs chapters.
Speaker 2: There's a few little subtle digs that you're getting back
Speaker 2: into your wet suit and oh, I can tell you guys.
Speaker 1: Are good mate.
Speaker 3: It's a long running thing.
Speaker 1: Husbands. And since I love quotes so much, what's your
Speaker 1: favorite quote?
Speaker 3: Well, it's a complete cliche, but to me it's become
Speaker 3: more and more obvious that it's true. And that is
Speaker 3: what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and that's perfect
Speaker 3: for you. I think. As Australian of the Year, the
Speaker 3: message I wanted to get out was to young parents
Speaker 3: and to kids that it's very important to get outside,
Speaker 3: have some adventures, take a few sensible risks, get off
Speaker 3: your screens and explore your local environment, whether that's jumping
Speaker 3: on your bike with your best friend and riding up
Speaker 3: to the park and damming up the creek and catching
Speaker 3: frogs and all that stuff that kids should be doing
Speaker 3: instead of playing on their computers, and to the parents
Speaker 3: to let them go and ride their bikes around. They're
Speaker 3: not going to get snatched by a predator, They're not
Speaker 3: properly going to get hit by a car. And you know,
Speaker 3: I'm a parent, and I know it's very hard and
Speaker 3: there are risks out there. But without risk taking, we
Speaker 3: don't become resilient, we don't become confident. We have to
Speaker 3: do things that challenges and can be hard or uncomfortable,
Speaker 3: and that will make us overall much better people. So
Speaker 3: wrapping kids up in cotton wool and hovering around them,
Speaker 3: not letting them even get a scratch, actually will make
Speaker 3: them much worse off in the long run.
Speaker 2: I loved reading that about your acceptance speech, and I
Speaker 2: think it had really strong parallels for me with the
Speaker 2: trip that started my leaving corporate to move into business
Speaker 2: was to a country town in Rwanda in Africa, and
Speaker 2: it was the first time I'd ever thought about the
Speaker 2: idea of happiness and separated that from success, because the
Speaker 2: children I saw there were happier than any child I'd
Speaker 2: seen in the West, playing with leaves for twelve hours
Speaker 2: a day. And I saw that in the way that
Speaker 2: the Thaie children were not released to the media straightaway,
Speaker 2: kept together and sent on a meditation retreat together without
Speaker 2: their phones, without social media, and I just thought that's
Speaker 2: such a valuable takeaway for all parents that you know,
Speaker 2: they don't need to be on their phones, they don't
Speaker 2: need to be on screens, like there's a lot of
Speaker 2: happiness outside of that world that we need to allow
Speaker 2: children to explore. You know.
Speaker 3: The other thing that really impressed me about the Thai
Speaker 3: people was that, and I predicted that this at the time,
Speaker 3: that as soon as the first comments I read in
Speaker 3: the Western media were things like that coach, how irresponsible
Speaker 3: for him to take those kids into the cave in Thailand,
Speaker 3: it was thank goodness, the coach is in there to
Speaker 3: look after those boys. We love and support the coach.
Speaker 3: It's a totally different mindset and to me, that says
Speaker 3: a lot about us and them. Yeah, and speaks to
Speaker 3: the resilience of the kids as well. You know, whether
Speaker 3: it's their Buddhist faith or the fact that they're just
Speaker 3: country kids who are kind of rough and tumble kind
Speaker 3: of guys, or whether it's that ethos that you find
Speaker 3: in Thai culture of forgive and forget and move on.
Speaker 3: Those kids are the real heroes of this story. And
Speaker 3: the four Thai Navy seals, you know, amazing people, and
Speaker 3: the fact that they.
Speaker 2: Chose the order that they all came out with. I thought,
Speaker 2: actually my first thought was if any of us when
Speaker 2: we were kids were told to like, we would have
Speaker 2: eaten each other. There's absolutely no way we would have
Speaker 2: come out in an orderly fashion and cooperated enough to say,
Speaker 2: here's our neat order. We're all going to sit here
Speaker 2: while the other four leave.
Speaker 1: Not a chance.
Speaker 3: Would you be fighting to go first or last?
Speaker 1: I haven't.
Speaker 3: I'd go somewhere in the middle. Once that anius has
Speaker 3: got the technique sorted out, I'd.
Speaker 2: Pick like the like one who I thought looked like
Speaker 2: the most athletic swimmer, and be like that one him.
Speaker 2: Thank you so so much, doctor Richard Harry, doctor Harris,
Speaker 2: for everything you've done, obviously for the nation, for the community,
Speaker 2: and for all the listeners You've been.
Speaker 1: Such an inspiration.
Speaker 3: Oh thanks Sarah. Cheers.
Speaker 2: Okay, my mind is still absolutely blown by what a
Speaker 2: mammoth task it was to save those thirteen boys, and
Speaker 2: also by how humble Harry still is about his role
Speaker 2: in the whole thing. I don't know about you, but
Speaker 2: I find the pulling of global talents, the technical nature
Speaker 2: of certain skill sets, and the psychology of impossibility so interesting.
Speaker 2: Please do show Harry some love by sharing and tagging
Speaker 2: at Richard dot Harris Underscore or his fabulous podcast at
Speaker 2: Real Risk Podcast.
Speaker 1: I'll pop links in the.
Speaker 2: Episode notes to that and his book so you can
Speaker 2: have a listen. Hope you're having an amazing week and
Speaker 2: is seizing your yay