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It was always a contentious issue between my parents, the amount of work
their young son was doing on the farm as opposed to in the classroom or
on the sports field, so in the end Mum won and I was sent off to boarding
school in Toowoomba for most of my seven long years away, learning how
to ‘fit in’.
I’d never really known hurt like what I felt at
boarding school, it was a strange and unexplainable thing. The only time
the pain ever went away was when I was back on my land with my dogs, either
working or just mucking about with them. That same pain you feel when
you’re apart from your lover, that unrelenting want to be with them
that you just can’t fix other than by being with them, that was
the pain. I still get it. It was at it's worst being inside the Big Brother
compound, because there I didn’t know how my land was; I was totally
and utterly disconnected.
In 1996, at 17, I was finally free of boarding school.
I was accepted into uni to study linguistics which was ironic because
I never felt accepted at school. I didn’t go, the call of the land
was too strong. My father wouldn’t have me work for anyone else,
so I set up camp in the shearers quarters on his different farms, ‘jackerooing’
for a few years. However that other pull grabbed hold, the pull to ‘know’,
to know what’s over ‘there’ and ‘there’.
So on a secret trip to Sydney with my two best mates Thes and Lydia, I
was approached several times by modelling agents…ha ha, yeah, like
in the movies, and a week later I was in Europe, hooning ‘round
the catwalks and magazine stands.
Well the struggle between me wanting to be on the farm
and also to see the world went on for years, culminating in a mammoth
thirteen-month world trip where I set out with just a bag and a zeal to
see it all, smell it all, taste it all and most of all just ride the wind
wherever it took me. By the time my hair started covering my chest ‘PG
mermaid’ style, I headed home having covered 46 countries, fallen
in love in Mongolia, and lived out my childhood dreams of being what I’d
read about.
The time came for my father to give me some control
and boy did I love every long day passionately increasing productivity
and sustainability as well as drought proofing the property to the best
of our ability. I leapt into the role as manager of our 45,000 acre property,
so much so that by year's end I’d driven my body into the ground
and busted my stomach open with a massive hernia. It was clear I needed
to have a break from the farm to readjust how ‘over the top’
I was and also to recover from the operation.
The next year was the year of true inner reality attending
Agricultural College in Victoria; I finally accepted I was not going to
have that white wedding my mother was desperate for. But it was a long
hard road to reach that acceptance, one that too many young men in the
same predicament veer off from into the abyss of self hatred and worse,
the tree of total denial. Thankfully I did survive, because I learnt to
talk to others and to cry; in fact, learning to cry was the best lesson
I ever had. I then knew that I was going to head home to my land with
a man and make a difference in the world. I didn’t have to live
by some set of rules. I was going to take life on and make the path easier
for anyone else making that journey.
I fell in love, was dumped, fell in love again, was
dumped, sold out my strong morals and slept around to get back at my absurd,
picture perfect dream of a future that I realized was becoming totally
unrealistic. I truly was feeling like the only bloke in the world that
wanted to live out an honest monogamous and dedicated life on the land.
So you are probably reading this feeling rather confused
(or a bit ill at my over lov’n) at the fact that I’d leave
my farm, which I'd just stocked with 1000 new ewes and a dozen pure Dorper
rams to go and get locked up in the Big Brother house.
Truth is, I was bashed by a hate-filled gang earlier
in the year and left for dead, as well as having a lifetime of self denial
due to societal conformity, atop a fear that too many Australians had
a negative view of those who didn’t ‘fit in’. So I had
waited long enough for someone to show Australia that it isn’t necessary
to ‘fit in’, that living your own life happily is what is
truly important. I left my happiness to share it with Australia by way
of a show that takes the lives of a select few into the homes of millions.
I wasn’t really prepared for either the show or
Australia’s response to what I did. I didn’t prepare for it
mentally, as I thought I’d be out in the first month at the most.
But despite my pleadings, the viewers wanted to see more (maybe they just
thought ‘if he stays in long enough he might just go bonkers!’)
and I was kept on in people's lounge rooms for 99 days.
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