Transcript: A to BE Episode 10

Mimi Kwa (00:03):
People say life is a journey, not a destination. But how do you know you’re on the right path?
Jo Stanley (00:10):
If only we could see the signs when they appear.
Mimi Kwa (00:13):
Well, I’m Mimi Kwa.
Jo Stanley (00:14):
And I’m Jo Stanley.
Mimi Kwa (00:15):
And on A to Be, we speak to fascinating people about how they navigated their way to be here now having profound impact on the world.
Jo Stanley (00:26):
We hope our conversations will help you reflect on everything you’ve been through to get here, the triumphs, challenges, and bumps along the road.
Mimi Kwa (00:35):
And if you haven’t already, find your own map to what matters.
Dave Graham (00:41):
Now as a middle-aged man, look back and go, “Holy (censored), that 26-year-old kid had some balls.” So many people say, “You’ve got to look after yourself. Don’t do it.” And I’m like, “Yeah, I’m feeling this fear and I’m going to do it anyway.” Because when the thing that you’re going to do is right, you just know that you should do it.
Jo Stanley (01:01):
Mimi, I think some people write off reality TV stars as possibly superficial or narcissistic or maybe self-serving. I mean, there are a lot of adjectives out there.
Mimi Kwa (01:12):
So many adjectives out there, but not one of them applies to today’s guest, even though he was a very well-loved and well-known Big Brother star known as Farmer Dave, you may recall.
Jo Stanley (01:28):
I do recall. It’s an appropriate name given he is a farmer, but he is also the founder…
Mimi Kwa (01:33):
And his name’s Dave.
Jo Stanley (01:35):
That too. But he is also the founder of a brilliant program that pairs dogs with at-risk kids to put them on a different path.
Mimi Kwa (01:43):
It’s called RuffTRACK. And their three goals are to keep kids alive, out of prison, and skilled up for a secure future. What an incredible purpose Dave has in his life.
Jo Stanley (01:56):
Yes, but that doesn’t mean his A to Be has been straightforward or easy. He’s an incredible storyteller. So let’s hear the very clever and charismatic Dave Graham tell his tale.
Mimi Kwa (02:08):
And did we mention good-looking?
Jo Stanley (02:10):
Oh, so handsome. So handsome.
Mimi Kwa (02:14):
Farmer Dave, we are so excited to have you on A to Be today. You are famous and well-known for many things, no less than Big Brother. So I feel like even though there’s a lot that we want to get to in our conversation today, that is probably a good starting point. Why on earth did you want to go on a reality program like that?
Dave Graham (02:39):
A bit weird. A bit weird, right? Why does a young farmer from Western Queensland who’s already done lots of stuff with their lives want to go on a reality TV because it’s kind of where people with attention deficit disorder go to be seen and heard? It was a political move, believe it or not. I’d been involved in politics in Western Queensland and across the country since I was 16. And equality was such a big powerful thing for me. And as I moved through my own personal journey with sexual identity and becoming a gay man that was solid in my own sexuality and comfortable in that skin, coming from a background where our culture was that we had to kill ourselves and it was encouraged to do so to just get rid of any shame. And that’s just the way things were done.
(03:25):
And I went on my own personal journey of I don’t want to kill myself. I don’t want to move to London, Sydney, or Los Angeles. I wanted to stay as a farmer. So I needed to move the culture. I needed to move the conversation. And although I never had a TV myself on my station, I’d seen TV when I was at ag college down at Waurn Ponds in Victoria and knew this show Big Brother and how all-pervasive it was and you couldn’t escape Big Brother. It was the most pervasive conversational piece anywhere in Australia. No matter how rich or how poor or how into things or how out of things you were, you knew about the show. And it was a conversational piece.
Jo Stanley (04:03):
This is 2006, just for people who might not be across…
Dave Graham (04:10):
Yeah. Yeah.
Jo Stanley (04:12):
We’re old, right?
Dave Graham (04:12):
What even is Big Brother? Yeah. Yeah. So it was literally my way of changing the conversation within every household in Australia. I mean, back then three million people would tune in and watch the show, plus it was on all the media everywhere. You couldn’t turn on a radio station, as you know, Jo, without talking Big Brother. You couldn’t open a magazine or a newspaper without talking Big Brother.
(04:30):
So it was, I thought the greatest vehicle outside of Parliament which actually could change the way that we as a people saw ourselves because I thought Big Brother was this perfect mirror. It was a mirror on society. And did we or didn’t we like the look of ourselves? So that’s why I went on the show was literally to change Australia’s conversation so that people like me who grew up in cultures, be it in the Western suburbs of our cities or the Western parts of our country, we had an option, a third option, and that was to be who we are, where we are.
Jo Stanley (05:01):
My God.
Mimi Kwa (05:02):
Well, you did something massive on that show live. You came out to the world.
Dave Graham (05:08):
Yeah. Yeah, it was big. I had intended to stay there for a few weeks and allow people to really get to know me and then have that whole sexuality thing because I’ve dealt with it my whole life where people just assume that I’m a certain sexuality and then they say stuff and be coming from a really blokey world, really offensive stuff. They just say it in front of you. I suppose it’s like people of mixed race who look a certain race, people would be quite liberal in what they say around those people and you’re just like, “Oh, thanks.”
(05:39):
So I was really privy to what a lot of people would say about gay people not knowing that I was gay and I wanted to have three weeks just to show myself as was and then say, “And by the way, I’m gay. It’s a small part of me, but it’s an important part of me. And it doesn’t define how you should treat me because my sexuality is my business, not yours. Don’t be afraid of me. I’m not going to do anything to you. I’m not going to hurt you.” No, a gay person is, they’re just wanting to live their own life free of intimidation, fear, and abuse.
(06:08):
And I wasn’t prepared for when I said those words out loud because when I said those words out loud, look, the house erupted in joy, which was incredible. I wasn’t expecting that. And I felt all this love and connection with my housemates. But there was also this thing on a very personal level, which I’ve never actually spoken about. And that was just this gorilla getting off your back, this weight that I’d put on myself, not society, but I’d put on myself that I was caging in who I was and masking who I was for so long that now it was like this huge big gorilla off my back. And that feeling was just absolutely incredible. And I felt so light on my feet. And I wasn’t prepared for how that would actually feel. And I think anyone that’s ever had to come out in whatever way that looks like for them, that feeling I think you only ever have once in your life. And man, it was good. It was just…
Jo Stanley (07:02):
You did it on national television in front of two million, three million people. Well, not that you were aware because you’re in the house, you didn’t know what the reaction was outside of the house.
Dave Graham (07:12):
Yeah, had no idea.
Mimi Kwa (07:14):
Yeah, so what was that like not knowing? So you didn’t know, so there was sort of this blissful bubble that you were in and you’ve got the gorilla off your back and you’re being supported. But what was it like once you emerged into the public eye in a very public way?
Dave Graham (07:29):
Well, even before that, even before I emerged in the public eye, look, it was probably about two or three days later when that elation and all the endorphins and the noradrenaline starts to come out of your system, roughly that three days, I went into Big Brother and I completely broke down to a blubbering mess. And I was never a crier, but that just opened the floodgates, the emotional floodgates for me as a man, that I learned to cry from that night onwards.
(07:56):
I was petrified about how my mother was going to be treated. I was petrified how my family would be treated because it was always in my mind that I wanted to change Australia. And I knew that it could really destroy my relationships with my family coming from a family that very much so believed that all gay people should be dead or just burn in the pits of hell for all eternity once they did die. But I had never thought how is my mother going to be treated and how is my father going to be treated and how are my siblings going to be treated, even though they now are part of this story, they have a gay son, a gay brother. And it just hit me, I’m like, “Holy (censored), what have I done to my family?”
(08:32):
And looking back, I just think, “Oh, what an empathetic young man I must’ve been not to be so self-indulgent on my own journey.” But that just really hit me. And that was what really loaded me back. The gorilla got back on my back and I didn’t have that freedom until I got out of the house and people were cheering and screaming and people saw me as a brave human, not just a person who wanted to change the conversation, but a person that was like, “Wow, you can do this stuff raw, not just at the dinner table, but in front of millions.” And then my family was accepting.
(09:02):
And my family had had that period of time to listen to such positivity from the rest of the community. And my mother was hugged by many people. She thought she was going to be thumped many times, and people just randomly hugged her. Because, of course, we come from a station, we don’t come from a town. So when she would go into town, she would be met by strangers or people that she knew and she thought that she was going to be violently attacked many times because that is the pervasive fear that we trap ourselves in in these culturally unaware parts of Australia, that we think that everyone wants us dead.
Jo Stanley (09:31):
So that’s where I want to question you saying that you put this gorilla on your back yourself. You didn’t put that there. You’ve said more than once now that the shame taught you that you should be dead. So society put that gorilla on your back. You weren’t born with that gorilla on your back. It was placed there.
Dave Graham (09:50):
And so true, Jo, but I was a willing participant. And there are so many people that I think you guys know, they’re not willing participants in the caging. They’re not willing participants in the story. They were probably the Germans that didn’t salute. I think that I was part of the problem. But you know that wonderful gay kid that’s like, “I don’t care what you think, I’m going to do a pirouette right now in front of assembly. I don’t care”? Those people, I think they never have that gorilla, whereas I certainly was a part of it. And I know what you’re saying, but I still think that I’m the one that closed that lock on my own self and my own self-expression.
Mimi Kwa (10:29):
It’s beautiful that you take responsibility for your own behavior, but there are, as Jo says, so many factors in society and culture that impose themselves on us and we unwittingly become players in that narrative. What I am so interested to know about and in terms of that narrative playing out, aren’t you like one of a million siblings or something?
Dave Graham (10:55):
Yeah. Yeah. Mom and dad didn’t have TV, as I said. Yeah. So I’ve got 10 brothers and sisters. Yeah, there’s a lot of us.
Jo Stanley (11:02):
And did they not know that you were gay before you went in the house?
Dave Graham (11:05):
So I’d come out to my mom probably about a year and a half before when I was going to college down in Waurn Ponds because I’d made a very active decision not to kill myself, like other kids in my college and my boarding school, they did. They did. It was just what was expected. I very consciously got out of a vehicle one day and didn’t make that choice. What I chose instead was to be open to the woman that brought me into this world, the woman that I love the most in this world.
(11:33):
And she didn’t take it too well. She didn’t understand. And it took her about a year to a year and a half of working with PFLAG and working with as many people as possible, including a couple of my sisters, to try and help her to understand what that actually meant when I said that yes, I am gay. This is who I’m attracted to sexually. I’m no different person, but that’s just who I am. I’m just attracted to these people. And just for allowing my mom to take that in did take a while and it did take me also to…
PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:12:04]
Dave Graham (12:03):
… for allowing my mom to take that, and it did take a while, and it did take me also to open up to two other sisters. So they’re the only people that knew beforehand going into the house. And I thought the easiest and best way is change my life, change Australia, do it all in one big, rip that bandaid off and say, let’s get some sunlight on this wound Australia, because we were built on the idea of the first white people that were condemned to death on this continent were condemned to death for gay activity. And I wanted us to say, let’s not have that part of our culture anymore.
Jo Stanley (12:32):
So do you identify now as a courageous and brave person because you did that? Because you were possibly blowing up your life.
Dave Graham (12:40):
Oh, a hundred percent, yeah. Now, as a middle-aged man, look back and go, holy shit, that 26 year old kid had some balls. So many people say, “You’ve got to look after yourself. Don’t do it. Don’t do it.” And everyone’s saying, and this is the story of my life, everyone says, “Don’t do that. That’s too risky. You’re crazy.”
(12:59):
And I’m like, yeah, I’m feeling this fear and I’m going to do it anyway. Because when the thing that you’re going to do is right, you just know that you should do it.
Jo Stanley (13:08):
Oh, and now at the time then, and still since then, there are young people or even middle-aged people who haven’t been able to share their truth with their people in their life and they see what you did. And that no doubt is a part of their A to B, that no doubt impacts on hopefully their willingness to face that fear.
Mimi Kwa (13:29):
And so Dave, what were you like as a kid?
Dave Graham (13:32):
Well, I had a very unusual childhood. Anyone who grows up on a station where a tiny percent of the world’s population, we don’t grow up in a normal human system, which is a village, a town or a city or an urban area or a suburbia. We grew up literally alone on very big plots of land. And we don’t come in contact with a lot of other people. And we live with the earth, around the earth. I mean, most of the food that I had when I was a kid was what we grew on the farm, what mom grew in the gardens, and of course the livestock we would eat for meat and even for sometimes there during floods, we’d have to mill our own grain to make bread. We were very self-sustaining on a big station. So culturally, it’s just very different experience for a young person to grow up in.
(14:14):
So you get perspective at a much younger age. And especially for me being the youngest of 11 kids and then having lots and lots of cousins that would come to the city, I’d always hear these conversations around me about this world that existed, but it didn’t make sense because I’d never seen it. But yeah, it was very, very unusual. But it was very, very connected to the bush and a lot of responsibility. I mean, I was driving 500 horsepower tractors at the age of six. Driving trucks, and obviously all the Utes, it’s all happening. By the time you’re eight, you are a fully functioning farm hand. And it’s quite extraordinary to think, I’ve got little kids now, and it’s just like, holy shit, that was the age that I was out in a paddock for 12, 13 hours a day on my own.
(14:55):
So in short, an extraordinary childhood that so few get to enjoy. But with that comes an incredible amount of freedom and opportunity to grow your own mindset. You’re never limited. So that’s the dichotomy of how I grew up. I was very caged in the culture against my sexuality, but I had this incredible freedom and opportunity that the children just don’t normally get.
Jo Stanley (15:19):
Your brain is just remarkable. You’re such a genius. The way you speak just inspires my mind. I get taken along with the journey of how you think. It’s beautiful. And I feel like the freedom you talk about in the lived environment has really inspired the way you think.
Dave Graham (15:37):
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, the work that I do now with children is very much so about giving them those freedoms. And look, wherever we look in the world right now, and particularly right now, be it in Australia over the campaign that’s just occurred or happening in the Middle East, freedom comes with connection to country. Freedom comes from land ownership, and it’s such an elephant in the room that we rarely talk about. But what I try and do with children is what I had. And that is that connection to land, that idea of freedom when you’re out there breathing in, touching things, being grounded to real ground, not the wood or acrylics and not the bitumen that we have in a city environment, which is what most people take for granted as their world. I try and take them back to what is really roots, trees, leaves, and dirt. And it’s that freedom that can really expand you back into us being pre-industrial revolution creatures as part of a planet that very much so has a role in the entire dynamic.
Mimi Kwa (16:39):
So what was your biggest chance event? What was your biggest sliding door moment that led you either to the modeling or Big Brother or something beyond that? What has been the pivotal time in your life?
Dave Graham (16:53):
Okay, so there is so many moments, but I’m going to give you one that is something that, probably, you’re not going to believe or something that you just think is just too good to be true. So here I am traveling the world. I think I’d been to about, by this stage, 50 odd countries. I was in Ulaanbaatar. I’d come right across the former Soviet Union, spent my 21st birthday up in the Arctic, and by September was in Ulaanbaatar and just organized a Jeep because Mongolia back then had no roads whatsoever outside of the capital. I’d organized a Jeep to go to the northeast and just go riding on horses like the ancients did across the Russian step and took over Europe. And of course, my love of riding horses all stems from this place where people bonded with horses 20 odd thousand years ago or whatever.
(17:46):
So I wanted to do this. As I was leaving a place where I was staying, there was this amazing movie that a couple of the British backpackers were watching and some Mongolians where… There was an attack on New York. And I thought, that’s a cool movie, I’m going to see that when I come back. Walked past where they were watching that, and then ended up going up into the bush. Of course, that was September 11. I didn’t know anything other than a movie that I’d just walked past at the time. Ended up in the Siberian border on horseback and then just kept coming in contact with this Mongolian herdsman guy and just was so attracted to him like I’d never been attracted to a personally before. And kept seeing him, kept seeing him all around Mongolia, which is bizarre because there’s no roads.
(18:26):
And when I was back in Ulaanbaatar a few months later after traveling right through the whole country on horseback or Jeep, I was speaking to one of my British friends and I said, “What is this? I keep seeing this guy and I just keep having this bizarre feeling.” And she’s talking about it, and she’s like, “Oh, that’s butterflies. That’s like feeling of being attracted to someone.” I’m like, “But he’s a guy.” She’s like, “Yeah, they’re a gay people.” And I’m like, “No, gay people go to hell.”
(18:53):
Anyway, she said, “How do you feel every time you see him?” And I said, “Just amazing. Like I’m high or something. It’s just the best feeling ever. And when we talk, we seem to get along so well.” Even though I spoke a little bit of Russian, he spoke a little bit of German, and we were able to have conversations. And anyway, I said, “Look, if I see him again, this is the universe saying that maybe there’s something that I should do about it.” And I just got smacked in the head and fell back down on the pavement.
(19:25):
And I got up and it was him, 2000 kilometers from where I last saw him. Turned out we got to know each other a bit, and he was actually doing census data. That’s why I kept seeing him everywhere. So he was a uni student who was collecting census data. That’s why I kept seeing him all over the country. But we did actually fall in love completely. I spent a week in Ulaanbaatar, we would go dancing and we kissed passionately as the winter was coming in under the night sky in the mountains above Ulaanbaatar. And it was just the most beautiful relationship that I’d had up to that date and one that I would never expected. And coming from my background, I never would’ve thought would’ve happened to me. Then he was like, “Oh, I’m not this gay thing. This is not me. I can’t do this.”
(20:11):
And then I was heartbroken thinking, oh shit, the whole world hates gays even here in the back box of Mongolia. It’s who we are as people. We just hate gays. Even though I’d learned so much about people. And then the winter was coming and I had to get out of Mongolia into China because they were closing the border because of different things that were going on. So I had to jump on a train that day, and it just started snowing. He arrived on the platform and I raced out and grabbed him and kissed him in front of everyone, and he kissed me in front of everyone, and we told each other that we loved each other. And there was that amazing song going on in my head about, I’ll always love you, but I’ve got to go. Right. Thanks Dolly Parton or Whitney. The one in my head was Dolly, not Whitney.
Jo Stanley (20:55):
For sure. Me too. Always Dolly.
Dave Graham (20:57):
Yeah. Yeah. And then, so anyway, he just said, “Go live an amazing life.” And I said to him, “You live an amazing life.” And we both had something open and change within ourselves. So I got back on the train, went to where I was sleeping, and it was a sixth birth sleeper, and I had five of the most hottest Swedish girls I’ve ever met in my entire life were in there as though the universe was saying, right, you’ve had your gay experience, now you’re back to this. And as the train pulled out, there he was crying. It was slightly snowing. And there I was surrounded by all these Swedish chicks, and I’m just like, what is the universe doing to me right now? And the clip to this story is they all turned out to be lesbians on a trip to China to empower feminism in China. And so it was just absolutely wonderful. I spent the next 12 hours chatting with these girls about sexuality and learning stuff that I’d never learned before, and had conversations that were open, liberal and amazing. There you go. That’s the moment.
Mimi Kwa (22:00):
That is the most beautiful, romantic and hilarious, uplifting story.
Jo Stanley (22:05):
Was that your audition tape for Big Brother? Because-
Dave Graham (22:08):
No, I didn’t tell them that I was gay. No, no.
Jo Stanley (22:11):
No, no, I know, but I’m being facetious. But you’re a very good storyteller. So I’m not surprised that they ended up casting you.
Dave Graham (22:17):
But I think that’s the moment where it all just came together. And it’s just like, what the hell? Because, and again, that’s what I teach young people now is you can all love something, but like Dolly says, you’ve got to be able to let it go. And that’s what I think true love is, is sometimes we have these moments in time that are lessons for us to learn, and let’s not be so self-centered that it’s just our lesson. But it’s a lesson for those around us, and thanks for letting me share that story. Maybe someone will get something out of it.
Mimi Kwa (22:46):
Oh, they definitely will.
(22:51):
Farmer Dave, just a quick skip through your recent history of A Dog Disneyland, which you sadly had to close, but tell us a little bit about that and then segue into what you’re doing now.
Dave Graham (23:05):
Yeah. One thing that I did as a random job, I used to jump out of planes and was training dogs to do urban search and rescue jumps out of planes with guys to be able to be first responders and find survivors from difficult situations in armies, plane crashes and earthquakes. Anyway, I was the one that needed rescue because my parachute had a bit of a failure thing, broke most of my body. The black dog had hit me because I was such an active, outgoing person, and I was told that there’s a lot of parts of my body that won’t work anymore. I’m not going to be able to do the things that I want to do. Plus I was in a wheelchair, plus I had broken arms. I was literally a vegetable in a wheelchair that couldn’t do anything. I needed people to toilet me. It was humiliating, it was grounding. It reduced me to the point of seeing the worlds that I’d never seen before. Being such a person that was able just to run and do and go and feel and be, I was just a passive human and not an active human. And-
PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:24:04]
Dave Graham (24:03):
… was just a passive human and not an active human. So, my parents sent me a dog, because I couldn’t go back to the farm, because the amount of care that I needed, I had to stay in the city. They sent me one of the work dogs, and I had got to the point where I hadn’t been for a long time, and that was, well, I should just end my life again. I thought, being an open about my sexuality, I never had those senses of wanting to do that again, but I was like, well, now I’m helpless. I’m just a burden on society, and I haven’t got anything to give.
(24:29):
But my dog, Rosie, she taught me everything I needed to know about being a human, because I’d learned a lot of dog training stuff from elders in my community and stockmen, and been very fortunate to spend many, many months on driving teams out in the west. A lot of those techniques had to do with violence, force, and intimidation, but when everything’s broken in your body, and you can’t do anything except for flick or treat, and maybe make a kissing noise or smile, you learn that to be kind is a really easy tool to communicate. So, through positive reinforcement learning only, I was able to train the dog to get my toothbrush, to get my pillow, to get the remote control, to open up the door. Then, as I became more and more active, to be able to have a little cart, to be able to go to the shops and put the shopping in. She was able to do everything like that.
(25:18):
Then, it was always this adventure in my mind of how it is that I could get the dog to do stuff so that I could do stuff. She gave me a will to live again, which is why I built the Disneyland for dogs, so that so many people could then experience this new way of training, this science-based methodology of kindness only and force-free training. That’s really the genesis of where I am right now, is working with large teams of free-roaming dogs and training many, many people from diverse backgrounds how to really appreciate, and get the most out of the dog, and honor the design in the dog, because all dogs are designed by humans. They were all designed for a purpose.
(25:52):
Often, we lose our purpose as humans, and dogs lose their purpose, which is why they do destructive behavior, because if you’ve got a sheep dog that doesn’t have a sheep farm, it’s going to be destructive. It has no purpose. If you’ve got a scent-detection dog and it doesn’t get to scent because it keeps getting in trouble for wandering off on the leash and jerked around, it’s going to be reactive, and it’s going to hurt people or hurt other dogs, because it gets pain every time it tries to scent, and that was what it was created for. So, bringing all the stuff of my background, and my experiences, and my extreme journey as a human with the journey that I went on with the dogs for 10 years, that’s why I do this work with kids, because I think dogs teach us more about humanity, and kindness, and this idea that every moment can be a good one if we choose for it to be so, and that’s why I’m here right now.
Jo Stanley (26:41):
Amazing. So the not-for-profit that you have co-founded is called Rough Track. You’ve shared so much already. It’s about the kids and the dogs, but what actually is the purpose?
Dave Graham (26:50):
Yeah, I mean, simply, we’ve got three jobs. First job, keep kids alive. Second job, keep kids out of prison. The third job is to give them skills for a secure future. So many kids, and this is just the saddest thing in such a rich country of opportunity like Australia, so many kids don’t want to be here. I was one of them, and I survived, and many of us, many people listening right now, they’re one of those kids. So, that’s our number one job. Each day, if I’ve kept kids alive, I’ve done the first part of my job.
(27:19):
The second job is to keep kids out of prison because this country, we’ve had a 230 plus year addiction to incarceration. I mean, I’ve taken the kids in this Rough Track program down to Tasmania where there’s an island prison for kids under the age of nine. A whole prison for kids under the age of nine. That’s how addicted we have been as a people since the British arrived as to incarceration. We still incarcerate kids at incredible rates, especially our First Nations people.
(27:48):
Again, if you’ve taken purpose away, that’s what’s going to happen. So, I’m very much about instilling purpose. Then, of course, the last part of the Rough Track reason for being is skills. Skills for a secure future so that all of our young people can chase their hopes and dreams, and be like me, a kid with all the opportunity in the world, but the means to utilize those opportunities, and someone who is in their ear every second saying, yes, you can. Yes, you can. Yes, you can.
Jo Stanley (28:18):
It’s so powerful and beautiful.
Mimi Kwa (28:20):
Dave, you’re so much about finding purpose, but do you think that with all of these stories that you’ve told us, all of the travel that you’ve done, all of these moments and trajectories in your life that brought you to this point, do you think that you were actively looking and searching for purpose the whole time, or do you think that purpose found you?
Dave Graham (28:41):
Crikey. I think the universe is so incredible, and finding our place and navigating our way through it is life’s purpose. The destination is nothing. All of our elders tell us, don’t worry about the destination, because that’s a box six feet under. Don’t you get too excited by the destination. It’s the journey. Back in the day before Siri, the journey was quite fun, when we had to have a book on our laps and try and navigate, and then you had mom next to dad saying, “Just ask someone. Just ask someone.” The journey was so much more fun before Siri came along and took away the problems of just getting from A to B.
(29:22):
But, yeah, did my purpose mind me? I just think that goes back to that open mindset of that little kid in the bush of wonderment because so many questions are posed by the conversations around me about this big world that I never saw, that I never touched, that I never smelled, that I never got to walk in, that there’s always been wonderment. So, I’ve always been open to anything that’s come my way. Definitely, the first six kids that rocked up, that the police brought to me in our local community that were causing massive percentage of the local crime, crime was just wiped out by engaging and giving purpose to those six kids. Those kids, you’re right, they found me, and they gave me a purpose. Every day they give me a purpose.
Jo Stanley (30:06):
Why did the police bring those six kids to you?
Dave Graham (30:09):
Yeah. Well, it was a community-run project when we first started Rough Track. The local community thought that dogs had been proven and skills had been proven in rural parts of Australia to really engage young people. It’s worked definitely with Backtrack up in Armadale, and other organizations have been doing it in rural and regional parts of Australia. So, they were like, I reckon it could work.
(30:31):
So, they invited me to come down to do the dog part of it, and then the coppers brought the kids, and they were definitely going to be a big part of it. Then, the coppers ended up having to be out of the program, and the other NGOs had to be out of the program. Then, it was just me, pretty much, and the kids have kept turning up. Now, I just found out earlier on today that we’ve had 126 kids come through this program, and when we first started, our goal was 20% of kids kept alive and kept out of prison. We’ve so far exceeded that to the point that we have lost one kid to a suicide, and we’ve had no kids go to prison, so we’ve smashed it.
Jo Stanley (31:10):
You are.
Dave Graham (31:11):
Yeah. It’s just giving the brave space for the kids to realize their best selves.
Jo Stanley (31:18):
What do you do with them? What is it about the program, and the dogs, and what activities, and having them outside, what is it that you do that has such great success?
Dave Graham (31:27):
So, it’s about giving them responsibility. The first thing they do when they arrive is, I don’t pick up the dog poo. They do. So, the first thing they do is they put on their boots, they put on their PPE. It’s like in any situation, do all the prior preparation, and get the shit job done first. Go and pick up the shit. Do an act of service to others, because if you’ve done that the first thing, then the rest of the day is a pleasure and a joy, and you’re going to have this mindset of I can rather than this sucks. The idea of foreboding is gone, because what did you do for the first 10 minutes you arrived? You picked up dog shit. You cleaned dog waters of all their summer scum and greenness, and you then, between all of that, the dog came over, and he sat, and he looked at you, and he listened, because what we know about dogs is they don’t talk much. They listen.
(32:19):
When you’re a teenager, what do we need? We need to be listened to. So, one of these kids there, there’s this magic that happens in the dog yard where, yes, he’s doing this act of service. Yes, he’s picking up shit, which is probably the worst thing you can do. Then, they’re able to have this moment without words to connect with this dog. The dog says, I see you, young person. I see you. Isn’t that what life we need? So, when you are asking, what do we do at Rough Track? Well, we see them, we hear them, we empower them. I’m a big, noisy, full-on person. So, when they first start, I’m big, I’m loud, but then, slowly, by the end of the 10 weeks, I just withdraw, withdraw, withdraw.
(32:56):
Before you know it, they’re the one racing out there to pick up the dog poop. They’re the one that sees a bit of rubbish on the ground and that picks it up. They’re the one that’s saying, “Hey, buddy, do you need a hand?” They’re the ones that’s like, “I’ve got water if you need water. Got to stay hydrated.” They’re the ones that are doing all these things, because what the key to Rough Track is, it’s what I don’t do. It’s that we don’t worry about removing barriers from our young people. We’re putting challenges, and we back them, and we whisper into their ear, and we say, “I’m so proud of you. You gave it a go,” because the first thing that I say to these young people when they arrive is, “Thank you for turning up. If that’s all you do for the rest of the day, you just turned up here in the morning, you’ve won, and I’ve won,” and I give them a high five, and then they’re cheering for the rest of the day.
Mimi Kwa (33:39):
Farmer Dave, thank you for turning up. It’s so amazing what you’re doing, and it just seems so clear that part of your healing journey is helping others to heal and to try to help your little corner of the world to heal in the hope that it will emanate out as best you can. In the A to B of it all, I guess we all know that no healing journey, no mission or purpose to help others is a straight line. We stall, and we slip back, and two steps forward, one step back again. Recently, you have talked openly on your social media about your own overcoming of what must have seemed to you an insurmountable step back in your journey. Are you happy to talk a little bit about that?
Dave Graham (34:32):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, look, I’m hope in high-vis, right? That’s who I am. That’s how I roll. Look, the job that I do, that my team does, is hard. When I say hard, there are very few humans on this planet that would even want to do it, let alone actually able to do it. It is such a tough gig, because you are empowering, and you are cheerleading, and you redoing everything possible to allow a young person to just lift themselves up.
(35:02):
I’ve been teaching kids here for nearly five years, and all the youth work before that, and all the community work before that, to not be relying on substances. Yet, I became so reliant on substances myself. I mean, to deal with the stuff that I was hearing from children, when children would unload their stories to me, I would take that on. I didn’t realize it, and I was some days drinking a carton of beer just to be able to get to sleep, taking on all their burdens and all the terrible things that people, big people like me had done to them, and I took it on as a, well, how can I help unload this person’s pain and share this person’s pain?
(35:39):
So, I was using alcohol massively just to get to sleep at night, to breathe, because when you’re in a space where you’ve got a lot of young people, a lot of needs, and also, my team, my staff, they desperately need me to empower them to be able to keep going in this work. So, I did take on a lot of addictions and realized, who the hell am I, telling these young …
PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [00:36:04]
Dave Graham (36:03):
… who the hell am I telling these young people, “Do this?” And yet here I am drinking myself into oblivion each night and smoking my lungs to the point that I was coughing up a lung in the morning. What a hypocrite. I have been on a journey the last two years to really rid myself of all of these crutches. And for a person that needed wheelchairs and crutches for such a big part of the last 10 years of my life, it’s hard to get off. I feel right now that I’m at the point where I don’t have any addictions whatsoever to the point that I don’t even have sugar anymore at all, and I can now speak from a place to these young people of lived experience, which I think as big people, we need to be able to do for our little people. We need to be able to say, “Hey, I’ve walked your path. I’m not walking it right now and I’m not walking it for you, but when I am suggesting to give this a go, it’s coming from a place of being there.”
Jo Stanley (37:05):
I think what’s really powerful in what you are saying too, though, is acknowledging that living your purpose doesn’t mean that it’s easy in actual fact. People assume, “Oh, I found my purpose. Great. Now it’s going to be met with ease and the universe will just provide me with this path.”
Dave Graham (37:21):
The problems don’t get smaller, you just get stronger, right?
Jo Stanley (37:24):
That’s it. The struggle sometimes is even bigger because you’re so determined to continue on the path rather than, “Fuck it. This is too hard. I’m going to go and just go partying or whatever.” Actually, not staying to this purpose. But wow, it can be really hard, and I think we beat ourselves up if we feel like we’re in struggle, but that’s just normal, right?
Dave Graham (37:43):
I think you’re right, Jo. The more purpose you have, the more challenges that come because you’ve got a designated lane to stay in. You can’t just be turning left. You can’t just be turning right. You’re like, “Well, this is where I’m going. Holy hell. I need to have emotional armor that I don’t think I was evolved or equipped to have. But crikey, Moses, I need to get some skills on board to have it.”
Mimi Kwa (38:06):
Yeah. And I think that addiction becomes such an appealing unconscious option because it’s escaping from the discomfort that we feel in the face of these challenges when we are in our purpose. And is there something now that you can look back on over the last two years that makes you, I guess, realize the lesson in that around mental health, self-care and how you need to tend yourself before you tend to others? It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? But so many people forget.
Dave Graham (38:42):
Oh, every plane we get on. Every plane we get on, they say, “Put your own oxygen mask on before you assist the vulnerable people around you.” Isn’t it crazy? We get told these things from our elders from such a young age, and it takes us to become an elder ourselves before it truly makes sense. But yeah, what have I learned? Breathing, purposeful breathing is the most important thing. If you’re going up a gear, just like your vehicle, you need to be opening up the air valves to be able to get that fuel in the air mixture to be able to get up that hill. We’ve all seen the diesel buses trying to get up hills in our towns, and we know what happens at the back end, all that belching smoke because the mixture’s not right. With breathing in its actual simplest form of air in and air out, and the mixture of what we need to function ourselves and keep our body and brain working, simplest thing, and it’s what we first do when we come out of our mothers, isn’t it? That big deep breath.
Jo Stanley (39:39):
Oh, you’re making me … Oh, I just feel that breath in my chest right now. It’s so precious.
Mimi Kwa (39:44):
Oh, me too. If only people could see how deeply and animatedly Jo and I have just been nodding to everything that you’ve been saying, Dave. That’s just so amazing, and I think that is a beautiful moment to segue into our origin story. You have just been so generous in sharing with us, Dave. I’m now going to share something with you, which this is the origin story that we’d like to bring to the program towards the end of our chat with our guests. And I was thinking long and hard about something to do with perhaps dogs or famous dogs, and I was looking up Lassie and Benji with your affinity to dogs in mind, Dave, and I started to think about bonds between dogs and their owners. And then I was thinking, “Oh, is there an Australian filmic icon. Man’s TV best friend?”
(40:39):
And then I thought of Red Dog and I thought of dog on the Tucker Box. And then I went somewhere a little bit surprising, which I think you might appreciate, Dave, because you’ve traveled a lot, and you know that millions of years ago, the water levels were much lower, the land was all connected, continents that are now separate. I want you to take yourself back to China 125 million years ago, and Australia was still part of Antarctica and the Jurassic period had ended, but the Cretaceous period had begun. We all know about the Jurassic period because of Jurassic Park. We don’t know much about what happened after that. But in what is now the coastal Liaoning province in China, there was a little mouse-like creature weighing about 30 grands. And that creature liked foraging and eating at night. It dug burrows and it had a long tail.
(41:34):
Now, millions of years later, it made way with its friends to North America from China, and then its great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, grandchildren traveled down to South America, and a few more million years on as if they hadn’t covered enough territory, this little marsupial wasn’t so little anymore, and it had grown and evolved and it trekked across Antarctica all the way to Australia. This is 50 million years ago, and it set up camp here and thrived. A well-preserved skeleton in China was unearthed and showed that the animal that we love to call our own is-
Jo Stanley (42:16):
Kangaroo fact, yes.
Mimi Kwa (42:18):
Not Lassie, not Benji or Toto, man’s best friend on Australian television, Skippy, the kangaroo originated in China.
Jo Stanley (42:28):
Wow.
Dave Graham (42:29):
Like most things we get to enjoy nowadays.
Jo Stanley (42:35):
Including Mimi. It’s true. That’s true.
Dave Graham (42:40):
Wow, that is awesome.
Mimi Kwa (42:42):
It is awesome. 50 million years ago, the ancestor of the kangaroo came to Australia.
Dave Graham (42:50):
Wow. So cool.
Jo Stanley (42:51):
Wow. I love that. I actually similarly looked up the origin of the Blue Heeler worker dog. Although you have Kelpies, don’t you?
Dave Graham (43:00):
Both. I actually have Bruce, which is the mascot for the New South Wales Rugby League team. He’s over there as well. Yes, so we have blue heelers as well.
Jo Stanley (43:10):
Well, but yeah, so blue heelers actually did descend from dingoes, apparently.
Dave Graham (43:14):
Dingoes, Dalmatians, Kelpies, Smithfields. Yeah, real mixed breed by the whole family.
Jo Stanley (43:20):
Yes, I read that. Amazing. You’re so clever, Dave. I’ve got to say, just you’ve got so much knowledge in you.
Dave Graham (43:28):
I just like to learn stuff, which is really good because I’m hanging out with kids all the time and they always want to learn stuff too. Yeah.
Jo Stanley (43:37):
Yeah. We do finish the episode with the same question each time, which is what is it for you to be? What does it mean if you are being?
Dave Graham (43:50):
Crikey, what a bloody heavy question. I think empowering, for me to feel valued, to feel like I have a reason is when I get to cheer on others. That makes me tick. Being the wind beneath others’ wings.
Jo Stanley (44:08):
Your energy is extraordinary and so uplifting. It is one of your natural talents is to make other people feel great.
Dave Graham (44:16):
Thanks, Jo. Very kind.
Mimi Kwa (44:18):
You are such a beautiful human. Thank you for your time with us.
Dave Graham (44:21):
Oh, thank you. Thanks, ladies
Mimi Kwa (44:25):
Farmer Dave. So amazing.
Jo Stanley (44:28):
I love him.
Mimi Kwa (44:29):
What a great chat. If you’d like to support Rough Track, I know that Dave and the young people he works with would really, really appreciate it. Just head to roughtrack.com. As always, we’d like to say thank you so much for listening. Please check out our other great episodes in this series, and also in series one.
Jo Stanley (44:51):
Of course, series one. Don’t forget it.
Mimi Kwa (44:53):
Don’t forget it. Jo, what is your favorite from series one?
Jo Stanley (44:57):
Well, I actually love my interview with you, Mimi.
Mimi Kwa (45:00):
Oh, thank you, Jo Stanley.
Jo Stanley (45:02):
It’s the last episode in series one. And the reason I love it is because you hold space for others whenever we do these interviews. You really are so caring, and the way you guide people through these interviews is really, really powerful. But your story is so beautiful and profound, and to understand the trauma that you carry and your family history, all the things that make you who you are, and you’re so vulnerable in sharing it. It’s really special. I loved it.
Mimi Kwa (45:30):
Thank you.
Jo Stanley (45:30):
Yeah. Check it out in series one. And if you would like to leave us a review, of course, that would be super helpful.
Mimi Kwa (45:37):
And follow us at A to B Podcast. And also, if you’d like to check out the show notes, go to broadradio.com.au/atobpodcast. And finally, if you are interested in Radio for Women, which we hope you are, by women, hit that subscribe button on broad radio.com.au to stay in touch with our growth.