Episode 009 - “Blokes Don’t Cry” with Stuart Foy
“I remember going back to school and I remember sitting there, looking at everyone, and going ‘why has this happened to me?” Life is easy for these people. Who have I pissed off? Why is my life so bloody hard.”
A mate of the boys this week rolls in for a few yarns about life. Stu Foy had to grow up quick as an only child, from fighting the frontline of the black Saturday bushfires at 13 years old, then losing his mum not long after.
Stu chats about his tough exterior and how deep down he in fact does have feelings even though he would rather hide them most of the time. Together the boys unpack his ‘just get on with it’ attitude and how sometimes it helps and sometimes it doesn’t.
Talkin Tough is proudly brought to you by Ski For Life, an Australian charity dedicated to promoting mental health, wellbeing & suicide prevention. You can find out more at https://www.skiforlife.com.au/
If this Talkin Tough episode has struck a chord with you and you could do with some extra support, please reach out to a trusted mate or professional or call Lifeline on 13 11 14. https://www.lifeline.org.au/
listen to the full episode:
EPISIODE TRANSCRIPT:
Ben: Righto. Welcome back to another episode of Talkin Tough. Proudly brought to you by Ski for Life, an incredible Aussie charity focused on promoting mental health, wellbeing, and suicide prevention. And we are on a mission to redefine what it means to be tough. Legless, how are you mate?
Mike: Going fantastic Benny, as always, I can't wait to get into another episode of Talkin Tough.
Been some great insights so far. Looking forward to our guest today. Who we got?
Ben: Mate I'm bloody pumped. I have got unfortunately my best mate. No, I shouldn't say unfortunately.
Stu: Thanks very much mate.
Ben: My best mate, Stu Foy. In studio with us, mate great to have you.
Stu: Thanks for having me boys.
Mike: Stu, I'd like to start by asking you, mate you and Benny have known each other for a hell of a long time.
We'll get into that a little bit later on. But growing up Aussie, outback kind of character, love to go hunting, fishing, camping, all that sort of stuff. Needless to say, you probably love country music too. Am I right about that, Ben?
Ben: Ask him.
Stu: Wow. You would not say no.
Mike: Oh yeah. I wanna know
Ben: I forced [00:01:00] his hand.
Mike: Yeah, you did. Yeah. I'd love to know from you Stu, what did tough mean or what did tough look like to you when you were growing up?
Stu: Growing up, I'm an only child. I always wanted a sibling when I was a kid. Because it was just more fun to play with someone growing up where we did in a sort of semi-rural area.
Wasn't a lot of kids my age around. And I grew up with older parents. Mum was a cop, Steve, my old man
Ben: That's his first name.
Stu: Yes. Steve. Yeah. That's all he gets called. He gets called other things. He grew up in the Army, so I had two very dominant old school parents. And. I think they'd given... they'd given me a, fair idea of what tough was.
They were very strong-willed people no nonsense the whole time. And for example, like I remember when I was a kid, I was riding my push bike around the house [00:02:00] and I dunno what I was doing. I was probably going too quick, fell flat on me face, smashed my head into the ground. And as most kids do, crying is not your first reaction.
So I ran, to see mum, like I'm bleeding from the face and she just turned around and said, you'll be right. What's wrong with you? You've just fallen off your bike. Have you broken anything? I haven't broken anything. Shit get back on your bike, go for a ride. And that was it instilled in you like you just gotta just keep going on.
The same thing with a horse. Like big thing when I was, a kid, I always wanted a motorbike. I would've bloody killed the next door neighbor for a motorbike. Every time I asked for one, I got another horse. So it was like the saddle club at my joint. By the end of the time, more horses, I just had to feed 'em all.
But every time I fell off the horse, mum was always, if you get back, if you fall off, you get straight back on because if you don't get back on the horse, you've then... you get a complex about the horse. You don't wanna go near it because you think it's gonna hurt you all the time. Yeah, and that was the way I was brought up.
I was very [00:03:00] old school mentality I reckon.
Mike: Sounds like a pretty good way of instilling a little bit of resilience in year two in some ways. Would, you look back on that? Think that's a positive or a negative?
Stu: No. Positive. A hundred percent. Yeah. It was looking back on it now as being a bit older, like I'm nearly 28 now.
It was hard when I was doing it because I was young, I was seeing all my mates with siblings, kids next door. Yeah. We go play footy, cricket, whatever. I never did any of that really, because just the way I grew up. But looking back on it now, it's given me qualities that other people get later in life, but I had them from a very early age.
Yeah. So it's been able to assist me fairly early on in things that I do, like career wise or just dealing with people. Pretty handy.
Mike: Absolutely. Dealing with Ben, for example.
Stu: Oh yeah.
Mike: Resilience there. I would say
Stu: he's tough customer.
Ben: And mate, let's not beat around the bush like, this gives us a [00:04:00] little bit of a picture about growing up, like you said, small farm, semi suburb, semi-rural. And let's talk about for you, when shit hit the fan.
Stu: When I was 10 years old, we went away to a holiday to the UK for four months. So as I said, I was 10 opening 11 birthday over there. Grouse. Best holiday you could probably ever have as a kid, would've cost the parents an absolute fortune to do.
But it was always a dream of theirs to go overseas. Go back to UK or whatever. And we did a bit of America and rooted around all over the joint. But when I got a little bit older that we found, mum had found a lump in her breast before we left. And instead of getting it seen to before the holiday, she prevented... postponed that to when we came back.
So she didn't ruin it. Came back, found out it was breast cancer. Went through the whole treatment process and it's, by this stage I'm still quite young, so I can't quite grasp what's going on. [00:05:00] But yes, went through the whole treatment process, went into remission. They took out the lymph nodes, I think under her arms, happy days.
Then 2009 we had black Saturday bushfires, and so I'm 13 by this stage.
Ben: We were in year...
Stu: No, year eight, I reckon.
Ben: 09'. Yeah. Year eight, yeah.
Stu: Yeah, so we're in year eight, so Ben and I were at school together. At that stage we probably didn't really like each other too much, so we didn't spend a lot of time around.
Ben: No, there was two, two roosters, strutting around the same chook yard. Weren't really liking each other.
Stu: It was bloody. There was a bit of testosterone. Yeah.
So that we had the fires and for me, people really think negative about that time because it was fairly traumatic. For me I never saw anything that was super traumatic, but I experienced adrenaline like I've never experienced before in my life. Like you could do anything superhuman things. Like you could go and carry two 20 liter buckets of water full and you're running it around like it's nothing.
Ben: Talk to us about [00:06:00] that day, like that day. What happened?
Stu: I was actually at a swimming competition that morning and it was fucking hot.
Like it was a good day to beat a swimming competition.
Ben: When you're in the water.
Stu: Yeah, when you're in the water. But even when you're in the water, like you'd come up for a breath and you couldn't get oxygen outta the air. Like there, there were a lot of kids actually pulling out because it was just too bloody hot.
It was in Seymour so probably about an hour up the road, all the fire alarms started going off around, like the CFA alarms started going off around the joint. And being a fairly rural district, like everyone left. So we went home. I was with mum, dad was at home. Because she was a cop still at that stage.
We just burned through all the roadblocks, happy days. She if they told her to stop, she'd just say, I don't think so.
Mike: Get the old siren out or anything.
Stu: Yeah, no, she just turned and burned. Yeah. So we got home and then three hours went like three minutes. And I just remember the fire got there.
I remember [00:07:00] actually random things like we had kangaroos living in behind the house because they were sheltering from the front, of the fire. And then soon as that left, like soon as it went past us, they all bugged off, back out into the bush. Probably all burned to death, but it was a long day, but it went really, quickly.
And everyone came up to me afterwards and they said, oh, it's amazing like what you've done. But when you're doing it, your brain. Your brain completely switches off. It's not a cognitive thought that you're having, oh, I've gotta do this, I've gotta do that. It becomes-
Mike: Whar did you do? What what exactly happened? So you got back to the house?
Stu: Got back to the house
Mike: Talk us through it.
Stu: Yeah. Well so all the pumps and everything were all set up. So it was just pretty much organizing who's gonna do what and how and when, what's gonna happen. We had the dogs, we had to make sure they were safe, so they went under the house.
We went around, opened up all the gates for the stock so they could move freely. So you didn't want them penned in one paddock just in case. Then [00:08:00] it was pretty much just get as ready as we can be. Fill the gutters up full of water and you-
Mike: and by this stage you could see the fire front?
Stu: Yeah. Front was, nearing you.
Mike: How close was it?
Stu: Oh, you could see it up in the bush, like in the bush behind us, because we border the forest. Yeah. You could hear it and you could. See it. Sorry, the hearing of it was like a jet engine. Yeah. Like people say when you hear a fire, you experience a fire. It's like a roar, like a real big low rumble.
This thing was like standing behind a 747. Like it just screamed. And the wind was phenomenal. The heat was extraordinary. Like I remember I completely drenched myself to the skin. I was wearing full length overalls and a couple of minutes I was bone dry. Dry, like just crispy. I could've taken the overalls off.
They would've stood up by themselves. Yeah, so it was when the fire actually came, I was given the back of the house to look after in the sheds and whatever. So carried on and I did all of that. We were lucky enough to have a fire truck in our area. We were the only people in the [00:09:00] district to get one.
Yeah, so they came and the fires were great. Actually. They had a mayday call come from our place because one of the fireies got burnt quite severely. And it was one of the few mayday calls from like our area. So they had to go, had to take him to the Alfred. So then we're left on our own.
But by that stage, the front had passed. It was just mopping up like parts of the house had burnt. But we didn't realize the firemen had put all that out for us. So we, over the next couple of days, we were looking at the house going, where'd all this come from? Yeah. Like this, the house was on fire at some point.
And someone else had put it out for us. So we were, the house should have burned down. We were just incredibly lucky, but I think for the parents, like for mum and dad, it was a very, stressful experience. Mum having the history of breast cancer, added stress. It then she got... the old man actually had a heart attack six months after the fires.
Very inconvenient [00:10:00] for him because we had a lot of work to do and he was laid up in bed. And then I think a year after that, mum was diagnosed with liver cancer.
So it the surge because by this stage I think I was 15, 14, 14 or 15? Don't know... I was 14. The surgeons explained it to me like her liver was a bag and the cancer inside the bag were like marbles.
So if you can imagine a bag full of marbles, that's what her liver was like. So he said, we can't go in there and cut one tumor out. You take the whole thing. And it was too risky because if they had touched it, It would've just, it was spreading anyway. So we saw, you could see the writing on the wall a little bit which I think was pretty hard for the old man.
Mike: What about you?
Stu: Yeah it was probably easier for me because I didn't probably understand it fully. Like she was a mum to me, but he was for dad, she was like, he was, his [00:11:00] soulmate essentially. Like they'd done everything together. They bought the property together, they worked their ass off for it. And yeah, it was like, it was tough pretty tough on me because I was only young. But at probably at the time I didn't realize how tough? I cried, like you've run outta tears. That that kind of crying. But at the time you probably didn't think about it too deeply. It's sad. It's a sad thing. So like when something bad happens to you, you just think this is, this sucks, this is shit.
Yeah, so that's, that was a pretty stressful kind of experience. So then it was just Steve and I, just couple of blokes living on the hill together, arguing all the time. It's great.
Ben: There's obviously been this point in time from marbles in the liver to the riding on the wall. If you're cool to go there, let's go.
I'd love to go a little bit deeper cause I don't even really know [00:12:00] that when your mum did pass away, like what was. That initial sort of feeling like, and like you're obviously surrounded by people and meals being dropped off and this, that, and the other, like running on adrenaline. What's going through your head in those moments and then those moments compared to, because I know then you get the moments, like you say, when it's just you and the old man, like were you talking about it, were you, what were you doing?
What were you thinking?
Stu: Yeah, I, because because mum had been sick for so long, she'd been in hospital for ages. So I remember having Christmas in hospital. I remember going down the little shop and you get little Turkey sandwich and I'd go and sit in the window at St. Vincent's Hospital and eat my sandwich for Christmas like the old man and I, we'd been living together by ourselves for a fairly extended period of time. When mum did pass away and she ended up dying from.. She got pneumonia in the end from because [00:13:00] back then there was this swine flu epidemic was going through. And she was like determined. She'd come home for something, they let her out and she wanted to go shopping.
She wanted to buy something, went to the supermarket or the shopping center or whatever it was, and contracted swine flu. Which then she got pneumonia from, which then eventually she passed away from, which was kind, like a lot kinder to pass away from pneumonia than cancer. So it was a bit of a silver line-
like it's still sad, but it had to happen, like it was gonna happen and probably the better way for it to happen. After she passed away, we were surrounded by people like, which was good, and people wanted to come and do their bit and help you and drop meals off, like Benno said, and trying to get your mind off a little bit.
But after probably the week, I remember when we had the funeral and everybody came back to our place for the wake, like I just remember being there and there would've been [00:14:00] Christ, there probably would've been a hundred people there, like it was shit loads of people. I just remember getting on the four wheeler and just going down the paddock.
I just had to get away from everybody. because everyone's coming up to ask you the same thing. They wanna say the same thing. Are you okay? If you need anything, we're here. Like, all are very, it's lovely when people do it, but when you've heard it a hundred times you're like, I just need, I need a bit of time to myself here.
Just want to get away from you. It's understandable.
Ben: What do you feel like saying to them in that moment?
Stu: Oh, like you, you can't you're between a rock and a hard place because you gotta be, you're obviously hurting pretty hard.
Yeah. So you're on a bit of a nice edge and like you're pretty fatigued from the whole event.
And you're a bit, you're very overwhelmed. Like I remember at school, the school actually said to my year level, if you want to go, more than welcome to go. There was so many teachers that wanted to go, they actually had to write a roster for them. If they could go, because there were so many teachers that wanted to go, that they actually would've shut the school.
Mike: Sounds like she was a very popular [00:15:00] person your mum.
Stu: Bloody oath. Yeah. There was like, it was like the MCG at the funeral was unbelievable. 400 people there or something, like it was a pretty big funeral.
Mike: And you mentioned before soulmates, so you know you've, nicked off down the paddock. Your old man, how did he handle that sort of stuff? Same, sort of stuff way as yourself or how did he handle it?
Stu: My emotions are very much like my mum's. It's, you you can't change it like it's happened now. There's no point crying over spilled milk. Whereas he's a bit more... he worries a lot more about things. He gets a lot more emotional about things.
So he, I think he enjoyed having the people around him actually having that support. Which sometimes with the two of us now is in the best scenario because he... he likes having people to talk to and like the support around him. Whereas I more enjoy just dealing with how I want to deal with things.
I don't like people to try and push me [00:16:00] to say, you need to be doing this to get over it. Because how do you know? You inside my head? So that's... it is a challenge. And it was a ch- it was a challenge back then. It just did.... because we are both, we're both very, similar people.
And then extremely different.
Ben: That's true.
Mike: So, in this podcast we talk a lot about mental health.
Stu: Yep.
Mike: Talk us through some of the mental health challenges that you've had and, obviously it goes to show It's great talking to you today and, learning and, listening to your story and, talking about your mumand, the black Saturday, bush fires.
How different everyone's approach is and a one size fits all approach might not necessarily be the answer. And often people talk about the importance of talking to your mate. Sounds like from what you've been saying, that doesn't really help you. So what do you do if you do go through those dark times, how do you manage your mental health, Stu?
Stu: Yeah. It's a pretty good question, Mike. Like I've never really sat down to think about [00:17:00] how I deal with my own problems inside my own head. I do know sometimes I tend to bottle things up too much. I put the wall up, it's my problem, I'll deal with it my way. And it does come out negatively sometimes.
So I remember from my 21st birthday, because mum was a cop, I got put into a program called Police Legacy. Which if the cop has elect two, $2 out of every pay of every policewoman or policeman in Victoria goes into a fund for kids like me. So for kids whose parents have died on active duty or have died as a police officer.
They get looked after by this organization and it's very sim- it's based off the Legacy program for Return Servicemen. So for my 21st birthday, they gave me a donation. It might've been a thousand bucks or 2000 bucks. So it was a fairly substantial chunk of money, and it was them [00:18:00] saying, Congratulations, like you made it to 21.
This is a major milestone. You don't have your parent with you, but this is on behalf of the police organization.
Mike: And what did they expect you to do with that money?
Stu: It was up to you. You could, it was a pure gift.
Mike: Okay.
Stu: And so they used to... they did activities all the time. You get elected to do activities, which was, it was a great, it's a great program.
So then we had the dinner. It was a lunch for the 21st. They got everyone outta mum's old office because she was in her career. She ended up planning the security for the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games, like fairly significant kind of crew. So got 'em all together, put 'em in a big room. They looked after me at a lot as a kid and they presented me with my money and they said, Stuart, would you like come and say a few words?
Got to the front and turned around, looked at the crowd and I went to pieces, couldn't speak, couldn't say a single word. It wasn't embarrassing because I really wanted to say [00:19:00] thank you to these people because I'd known them since I was four or five years old. And they'd all done something for me in their own particular way and I couldn't say anything because my emotion just got in the way.
And I didn't feel silly, but I just felt like I'd let them down a little bit, which it did, it got to me a bit like I really wanted to. I transferred to them, like how appreciative I was. And I hadn't thought for so long that an event that happened six years ago was gonna have such a profound effect on me.
Like it just come outta nowhere. It was just a normal day. I turned up to the city, went to this dinner, lunch, and then just flip of the coin, I was in pieces. Like I, even when people come over to comfort me, I couldn't say anything. I couldn't look at 'em. I'm just balling, my eyes out.
Mike: Yeah.
Stu: Balling, Like people would come up and rub me on the back and say, it's right Stu it's okay. [00:20:00] That was pretty tough. That was one of the toughest things I reckon I would probably like, I dealt with her when it happened, like with when mum passed away, dealt with it when it happened, but then when this kicked off, like I'm 21 years old I'm considered a man in this world.
This past problem is reduced me to rubble, like literally rubble in front of people that I really, respect. So I don't really know how I dealt with it like I did... I come to terms with what had happened. I've always found sport, like when I was swimming, like if I'd have a tough day or something or things were just getting with me, I'd jump in the pool and you can thrash the shit outta the water and it doesn't hit back. You're hurt for it, but like you can hit the water. Christ, you can hit it hard. As long as you don't hit the wall, you're doing all right. But I always found-
Mike: let out a bit of anger.
Stu: Yeah. Just let the steam go, just let it happen. Probably in later years, like the [00:21:00] more you work, like the harder you work, I find takes your mind off it.
So you push your body to the extreme to see how hard you can work, and it gets rid of that sort of feelings like you, by the end of the day, you get to go and get, yeah, I felt shit at the start of it. But look what I've achieved today. Like you are not useless. Look what you can do. Then another, like another, I was talking to Benno before and I said, because my dog died at the start of the year.
And you'd think something's so little as your dog like passing away, you think yeah, it's sad, but like I don't take days off work. I remember when I was at school, I had bloody gastro one day and the old lady said yeah, you can take off until recess and get on the bloody, you going to school kid.
So for me to take a day off school or day off work is it's something pretty significant.
Mike: Pretty big gig.
Stu: Yeah. Yeah. And when Max died, got bitten on the face by a snake and blah, blah, blah. And I actually got him off the people that used to [00:22:00] live in front of Ben. So Ben knew him from before I knew him.
And that that brought it all back again. Like a small event tipped me right over the edge. Like I didn't want to go to work, didn't want to do anything. Like he was, he used to come in the tractor with me every day. Oh. Every day. Whenever I got in the tractor, he was there with me.
Ben: Cause I'm just in the tractor every day. Cause I'm a big old farmer.
Yeah. Big timer. That then I could, I didn't want to drive it. Didn't wanna get in. It just, because.
Mike: This event had reminded you of Max.
Stu: Yeah. Associated memories.
Mike: Yeah. I think when you said before it's not a big deal. It's it's only a, it's a dog or whatever. Couldn't disagree more. I know that Ben has got two dogs he absolutely loves and a lot of people listening will have dogs. That's a huge thing.
Yeah. And, obviously you're saying that event similar to these events in the past have triggered off some pretty significant emotion.
Stu: Hundred percent.
Mike: And that's what happened with Max dying
Stu: a [00:23:00] hundred percent. And I think over the time people don't do take me sometimes as being a very cold person. I've been told
Ben: emotionless some, would say,
Stu: oh, I've been told, numerous times, you're a Coldhearted bastard. And I think that's because I'm a product of my environment.
Yeah. What's happened to me, I've learned to process it in a way that I'm comfortable with. Yeah. And when an issue does arise and everyone goes, oh shit, this sucks, this is bad. I look at it and go, it's not that bad. Yeah, righto.
Mike: Could be worse.
Stu: Yeah. You got a flat tire, your car's broken down, who cares, mate? Get another one. Fix it.
Ben: But do you... do reckon that you've got that response because of what you went through with your mum?
Stu: I reckon, yeah.
Yeah. I reckon it is... Like I never I reckon it's a bit of both. Like I reckon it's a bit of my, upbringing. And. I reckon it's [00:24:00] also what I've had to deal with at an early age.
And I'd look at kids at school when I went back to school, because I had a week off after mum died. It might have been two weeks. Can't remember. I went back to school. I remember sitting there looking at everyone and going, why has this happened to me? Like these kids here, they got two parents live in a nice house.
They got everything they want. Life's easy. Life is easy for these people who have I pissed off that my life is bloody hard. And I did... it happened after the fires. I did that after mum died. It did that. And when Max died, it did that. That is a recurring thing. And I've gotta be really conscious to say, yeah, some shit stuff's happened to you.
But look what else you've done. Look what you've achieved, look what you can do. The skills you got, your friends, like your mates. It's... it's a big picture [00:25:00] sort of thing. You can't just focus on the bad because you'll never get outta bed. If you're scared of what's gonna happen to you, you'll never get outta bed.
So that's always been a big mentally conscious thing I've gotta think, yeah, this sucks for you, but there'd be someone in the world that's worse off like when yourself or Benno, like when Benno lost his eyesight, I was thinking like this poor bloke. And Ben and I were very similar growing up. Like, you said, there was a bit of testosterone running around the
Ben: bloody tension.
Stu: But then yeah when, things like that happen and it's like it's a proper life-changing event. Like your guys' lives will never be the same mine. Like I'm still able-bodied. I can still do the same things I did 10 years ago.
It's just my circumstances have changed doing them. And that was a big thing that Benno said, actually the old man said it to me. The first time Ben came up after he lost his eyesight [00:26:00] to my house. Like Ben used come up, we used to ride the four wheeler around, drive the tractor, do dumb shit right all the time.
Yeah. Just do dumb shit generally, mate. We still do it.
Ben: We still do dumb shit.
Stu: We probably do more dumb shit now.
Ben: It's probably dumber cause I can't see.
Stu: Yeah. I said to the old man, I said, what do I do? Like, how do I approach it? How do I deal with it? He goes, just treat him like a normal bloke. Just do it differently.
Mike: Good advice.
Stu: You just gotta do it just slightly differently. So we went out and we rode the four wheeler, rode the tractor, bloody burnt bonfires, split wood. I had him on the chainsaw. Yeah. People go, oh yeah, boys out cutting wood. I said yeah, I've just gotta watch him. I won't talk to you. I've gotta watch him this bloke can't see what he's doing. And then, holy fuck. Yeah. So can't just sit at home doing nothing all day because you get to the end. You got no dress rehearsal, like you might as well make the most of it.
Ben: Actually knowing that as mates, you would have all those times, but then up on that sheep station, there were also nights like that night, sitting around the [00:27:00] fire, and then we'd be talking about whether it's your mum or whether it was me losing my sight or me going... me having things going through my head or you having things going through your head.
Yep. And yeah, you might've had five beers and you might be sitting and looking at the fire or and not even looking at each other in the eye. because eye contact wasn't our strong point.
Stu: I was looking, you're dead in the eye.
Ben: Oh, righto. Rude prick. I wasn't even facing you. But it's in those moments that you go, it really is that balance of going have fun, but also know that we can talk about that stuff as well.
A hundred percent. And I think as much as like you would say yourself, you don't talk about it a lot. But that's one thing I've noticed with you is you've gotten better at it. Yeah, over time, like that first seven years, which is no different to me with losing eyesight, didn't talk about anything with anyone and just put on a brave face.
And probably after 21, after that legacy moment, you've probably, I... have you [00:28:00] realized that the importance to talk about it, how does it feel when you do talk about it?
Stu: Oh yeah. I, do get to a point where I'll be just going through day-to-day life and just I start thinking myself.
Fuck, I wonder what Benno's doing this Friday night. I'm gonna ring him up cause I need a couple of beers. Yeah, you need to you, you tell, your body tells you Yeah. Like you need to sit down and you need to talk to someone about
Yeah. What's going through your head? Because, your work's pretty solitary apart from the interaction with the old man and the blue and you guys do all day.
Yeah, We only take the piss when we're blowing. We don't actually mean it but, it's, but outside of that, like with your work, it's pretty solitary, right? So you need to Yeah, You've gotta, yeah, you've gotta have an outside or an external. Yeah. One, I'm a one man army steam blower.
Absolutely. I'm the king of the northeast of Victoria at the moment, so Oh yeah, tell yourself up. Yeah, so you gotta have someone that you confide in and you can trust. And because I've known Benno for so long and during that period, so much has happened and we've done so much. I can ring him up and say, mate, what are you doing?
You wanna talk, let's [00:29:00] go get a fire going.
Ben: Yeah. And I think that's something that as blokes sometimes you just know when you... I know when you are ringing and going, Hey, what are you doing Friday night? Wanna get a fire going?
Stu: Yeah.
Ben: Or Hey, what are you doing Friday night? Let's go down to the pub.
Stu: Yep.
Ben: There's different times where I've gone. I know I can say to this one, nah, I'm busy this weekend.
Stu: Yeah.
Ben: But then there's other times where, whether I know what's been going on or whether you just hear it in the voice or you go, Hey mate, really keen for a fire. Think it's long overdue and I'm going, righto, this needs to happen and I'm canceling plans.
Stu: Yep.
Ben: Because this one's important.
Stu: Hundred percent.
Ben: And it might take till 1:00 AM for one of us to actually talk about the reason that we want to be sitting together anyway because we've just dribbled on for the first six hours. Building up the Dutch courage to actually get there.
Stu: Yeah. We both know, like we're both sitting there. I'm looking at you, you're not necessary. You are looking in the [00:30:00] trees. But we both know
Ben: taking in the scenery
Stu: Why we're there, you can feel it that like old mate wants to say something here, but he's not quite there yet.
Mike: Yeah.
Stu: And I remember when Ben and I did Kokoda, it was my first time, his second time the mad bastard.
Mike: You just come back from Kokoda?
Stu: Yeah. Now I'm the mad bastard. But I remember at the end of that time there was a big emphasis on the end of the day, what's your positive of the day? What was your hard part of the day? Who do you think's really come out of their shell? And I remember sitting down and like we were with some, like some proper tradies that had been hard tradies their whole life. They were in tears. Like they were talking about stuff that was coming proper from the heart.
Mike: Yeah.
Stu: And it was things that you wouldn't expect out of them. And I remember just sitting there and, oh, it happened to me a few times. Like you sit, and especially because the old man flew over and Ben's grandpa flew over and the night that they were there, they said, what are you grateful for?
And I was like, just grateful the old mans here. Like it's something really, special that I'll [00:31:00] always, I'll always cherish. I've done it with the old man, like I've been to that significant spot and like you talk through your day, you talk through who's done well, and you might say, Mike, I'm bloody proud of you today, mate, the way your legs being carbon fiber and still walked up that track, mate.
Mike: Yeah.
Stu: Electric it's just, yeah, you've gotta be able to, as a bloke, you've gotta be able to have that conversation. Just talk.
Mike: Yeah.
Stu: Just, and I know it sounds like real cliche and everyone goes, you gotta talk
Mike: and you're probably because you're achieving something. You're with a group of people. It's the history of the place that you're in and you're exhausted as well when you're bloody exhausted, stuffed.
Yeah. All of a sudden it's really easy to let the lid come off, right?
Stu: Yeah. Yeah. And you don't necessarily, you don't have to sit around and drink beers like on Kokoda. You don't wanna drink beers because you're dehydrated anyway.
Yeah. So sit around and have a few hydrolytes
Ben: and, a massage. A bit of, and a massage.
Stu: Yeah. And some highway bickies. But, ... it you could be anywhere. Ben and I done it up, we've gone up the river and just [00:32:00] for a campfire. You just sit there and you just might you might wait till two in the morning. And then you just start talking and then you'll leave.
Ben: That was post covid, wasn't it?
Stu: Yeah.
Ben: Because we hadn't seen each other in way too long.
Stu: Yep.
Ben: And you just end up in your own little bubbles.
Stu: Yep.
Ben: And we were just like, I think it was one of the first or second weekends out. And it was pouring rain. We had no idea where we were going. And we just chucked two dogs in the car. And an eski and sausages and two swags. And we're like, we'll get to somewhere that'll do us the job.
Stu: We'll stay somewhere. Yeah. And get somewhere.
Ben: And that was pretty much it.
Mike: Yeah. So taking a leaf outta my book with that little trip there.
Stu: What's that? Camping.
Mike: Self confess, city boy over here, mate.
Ben: Hardcore camping mate.
Mike: I could not handle a trip like that cowboy. And I'm, not afraid to say it.
Hey Stu, I've I've really enjoyed learning more about you. I know you fairly well but listening to some of the shit you've been through has been pretty hard and I wouldn't minimize that in any way, shape or form or compare it to what Ben or me have been through or anyone like that. It's been through some pretty tough stuff. One of the things we love to do with our guests is we do a bit of a [00:33:00] quick fire set of questions, mate. So are you ready if we throw a few at ya? Stuart Schnitty or steak?
Stu: Schnitty
Mike: okay. Which one? Which one?
Stu: What do you mean?
Mike: Beef or chicken?
Stu: As in schnitzel?
Mike: Yeah.
Stu: Oh, and no steak. No, I thought you meant Parma.
Mike: Where did you go to switch off Stu?
Stu: The tractor.
Mike: Tractor.
Book, poddy, or tunes?
Stu: Probably Poddy
Mike: okay, good. Nice stuff.
And where's the best place to have a yarn with the mate?
Stu: Around a fire.
Ben: Around a fire. Good one. And what about the worst advice you've ever been given when it comes to your mental health?
Stu: People telling me what I had to be doing and how I had to be feeling. And people still try and do it to me now. They'll say, you should feel like this, you should do this.
You should feel like that. How do you know? Like I feel, the way I feel is because the way I'm made.
Mike: Yeah, absolutely.
Stu: Like my feelings will be completely different to yours Mike and Ben's will be 200% different than mine.
Yeah. You can't assume because you've got a set of bullet points [00:34:00] that person on the other side of the table, the other side of the room's gonna go through and go tick tick, tick, on those bullet points because that's what you're meant to feel.
Yeah, yeah, everyone's individual you're gonna feel very differently about a range of different things.
Mike: Absolutely. Best advice for your mental health?
Stu: Best advice for mental health would be the old lady I remember always said this to me when I was growing up, she said, and it's it's very simple.
Don't Bottle it up. Yeah.
Because for blokes, that's what we tend to do. We've got this facade of being 10 feet tall and bulletproof. She'd gone through a whole lot of emergency management, like she'd written emergency procedures for people that had gone through traumatic experience. And she said, I see big coppers, like proper six foot six, 120 kilo, balls of muscle that are, they're just lean, mean fighting machines in the force.
And they're useless because they've seen so much, they've done so much.
Mike: Keep it all in.
Stu: They just don't ever tell anybody. And by the end [00:35:00] of it, it just gets too much for 'em. Like you've gotta convey, you gotta... you can't carry all the weight to the world on your shoulders. You've gotta give everyone a little bit of it, which is not, you're not giving them the weight, but you're just expelling it outta yourself.
A hundred percent makes you feel better.
Ben: Knowing what you know now. Knowing your definition of tough when you're a whipper snapper, no. And what you thought it looked like then, and what it did look like then. What does tough mean to you now?
Stu: I think being tough is someone who talks about how they feel.
Because there's this big like stigma that blokes don't cry and I remember I, bloody at school, I used to cry about the girls cause they didn't like me that much. I thought I was my, I thought I was handsome, but no, tell you I wasn't. You gotta be able to talk, like talking about how you feel, what you're feeling, what you want to do.
If you've got aspirations that left of the field, you've gotta tell someone about it like you might want to be bloody a hairdresser. [00:36:00] Who cares. You wanna be a hairdresser mate? Good on you. Go and do it. You can't be scared to say that kind of stuff. If I was scared to say to people what I wanted to do or scared to try something new, which I did struggle with a little bit, when I was a bit younger, like a new opportunity would arise and I didn't wanna do it there'd be no chance because it scared the shit outta me.
Because I wasn't very good at it because I'd never done it. And I was scared of thinking what everyone else is gonna think about me. Like they might go, oh Stu he's shit. Look at how, look at the way he kicks a football. Damn I kick it better than Mike at the moment.
Ben: Mate, it's been an absolute bloody pleasure as always. And I think for me I was even learning things about you and what you've been through more so in between the two ears that we haven't necessarily spoken about in the same detail that we've covered today. So appreciate you sharing it with [00:37:00] myself, with Legless here with the listeners.
I know we've all taken something out of it because walking down the street, meeting you in the pub, meeting you in the local footy club, meeting you at work, people would just go, oh yeah, young bloke got it all together working hard and he's all sweet, but we've all got our own story. You've got yours, we've got ours, everyone's got theirs.
And I think you've just showcased that perfectly today and some of the lessons you've learned have been super practical and something we can all learn something from. So I really appreciate it, mate.
Mike: Cheer Stewy
Stu: no problem. Thanks for having me boys. And what you fellas are doing, especially in the positions that you both are in, is pretty bloody miraculous.
You guys are setting it on fire, like I ring up Ben, on what are you doing this week?
Oh, I'm flying to Bloody Perth with Mike. I'm doing this. I'm driving here. I'm doing that. Fucking hell mate. When are you gonna be home?
Yeah, No, you guys are doing a job cracking job.
Ben: Thanks mate. Appreciate it.
Mike: Cheers, Stu. Appreciate it.
Stu: No worries.
Ben: As always, if anything at all in today's episode [00:38:00] has struck a chord with you or sparked a thought to either speak up or reach out to a mate, please do. And if they don't pick up and you need to talk to someone, give Lifeline a call on 11 13 14..
Take care of yourselves.
