05/11/2023
With the last BigLap4PTSD presentations in Tassy done and dusted it’s now time to reflect on the journey and share with you some of the highlights and lowlights of the mission.
There's so much that I could mention about our travels through this big, beautiful country over the past six months and doing it on a motorbike was certainly a great experience but, for me it wasn't about a touring holiday, my passion was wholly and solely for the mission to help veterans and current serving ADF personnel presenting with mental health problems resulting from their service. In addition, it was about the five years of hard work setting up the not-for-profit company, the planning and preparing for the delivery of the PTSD presentations and then carrying out the mission to a carefully devised plan over 6 months, as diligently as possible. Sharing the knowledge, I've gained over many years of living with multiple traumas and the resulting complex post-traumatic stress disorder that I'll have for the rest of my life, that's a large part of what this mission has been about for me.
From the onset the intent of the mission was to combine that lived experience with a professionally prepared presentation by leaders in the field of Mental Health (Stotan Group). I spoke to as many veterans and their families, current serving ADF members, first responders and others who just wanted to learn about PTSD, however. From inception, the BigLap4PTSD was always going to be about presenting to as many Contemporary veterans as I could. I’m disappointed to say that there weren’t as many of them willing to attend or to talk about their experiences and mental health as I would have liked or expected. To my surprise though, family members of these veterans did attend in numbers, they did want to talk and were eager to learn as much as they could about the disease. Their intentions were to learn and gather as much about current knowledge and tools that would enable them to help their siblings. The comment “I just don’t know how to help him/her and I want to learn about it so I can help” was a very common one indeed.
Overall, I am very proud to say that the mission, in my view was a great success. Reading some of the testimonials from the presentation venues on this page below, you’ll understand what I mean. My goal was to help at least one person at each of the presentation venues, that was intended to be my measure of success. I’m pleased to say that I helped multiple people at each presentation going by the feedback.
A few of the standout occurrences for me were:
In shark bay, Western Australia I coincidentally met a very nice lady Doctor from the US by the name of Kate. It just so happened that she works in the mental health field in New Mexico and she shared with me some work that's being done at John Hopkins University to validate the safe use of psychedelic drugs for Severe Depression and PTSD. Upon researching this further I found out that Australia has been one of the first countries in the world to approve the use of psychedelics and a not-for -profit charity going by the name of Mind Medicine Australia is training up psychiatrists, phycologists and counsellors in its use. I was more than happy to share this knowledge as part of my presentations from that point on.
During a presentation to a large audience in Albany, Western Australia I mentioned that an unusual pleasure of mine that has resulted from my illness is doing the laundry. Putting the washing in the machine, taking it out and hanging it, bringing it in and folding it up and putting it away. Sounds strange I know but I find it very satisfying given that I’m doing important work for my family and that I feel safe doing it, no one is able to criticise me for what I’m going. Anyway, at the end of my statement about this I looked around the room at the blank faces and dwelled on the silence for a moment, then to my surprise a very witty middle aged lady in the front row blurted out “what are you doing tonight after this session love, I’d like you to come around to my place after and do my laundry” to which the whole room broke out in laughter. Suffice to say I kindly rejected the offer.
With a 10,000k service well overdue on my motorbike I booked in to a motorbike shop in Perth by the name of BM Bikes Pty Ltd owned by a really great guy by the name of Thorsten Friz. Firstly, he managed to squeeze my bike in at very short notice and within the very limited time frame I had available as we were still on the move with a presentation looming down in Albany. With the service completed I went in to pick the bike up late in the afternoon and to my surprise found Thorsten in the mood for a chat, particularly about what I was doing with the BigLap4PTSD. We would have spent nearly an hour sharing stories back and forth when I said to Thorsten, I had better let him get home to your family, it was well past closing up time. I asked Thorsten how much I owed him for the service, and he said “Nothing, this is my donation to your cause” this absolutely blew me away. They had done a lot of work on the bike, and he was more than happy to donate his businesses time, labour and materials to the BigLap4PTSD. I was quite taken aback with his charitable offer and thanked him with all my heart. I will never forget his kindness, such a caring, friendly and descent person, a great guy.
I met so many great people during the presentations, some of whom were dedicating their time freely to helping veterans and their families with respite, mental health training and therapy amongst other things. Albany at Ease, Robe to Recovery, Riverina Veteran Wellbeing Centre – RSL LifeCare just to name a few. These not-for-profit facilities are doing a fantastic job with often limited resources, personnel and funding. They have my sincere admiration for what they are doing for our veterans and families, simply wonderful people.
The RSL venues that I presented at varied considerably in their feel from a veteran’s point of view. On one hand was the large corporate style RSL with people coming and going all hours of the day and night. In these places would be the poker machines, gambling outlets, large dining areas and function facilities. These had all of the glitz and glamour of the leagues clubs and were located predominantly on the central and northeastern seaboard. On the opposite end of the scale are the small scale, old buildings, community and veteran run RSL’s with their copious amounts of memorabilia, once weekly or so meetings, pizza or burger nights, raffles and their smells, sounds and joviality that reminded me of the old Army boozers I’d been too during my service in the Royal Australian Engineers. All these venues had their pros and cons but essentially, they were doing much the same for the veterans, providing a place for them to come together, to re-kindle that great sensation of camaraderie and to be there for one another. Most of them were also providing advocacy services and personal help services for those in need. I don’t think there is any right or wrong type of RSL, it’s all a matter of individual perspective and preference although the ones that brought back the fond memories of the good old days in the Army for me, were really hard to beat.
I recon I could write a book on the BigLap4PTSD but for now I feel that the mission is complete and I’m looking forward to a well-earned rest and spending some quality time with my wife and children and some work on our little farm.
This will likely be the last post that I put on the Biglap4PTSD page unless there is a need to do so at some time in the future. Just one last comment, today my wife and I took the BigLap4PTSD stickers off the sides and back of the Jayco Basestation we dragged 22000km around Australia, it was a bit of a sad moment, especially for me.
