Rural Leadership Unearthed: dairy leader’s mental health mission

Claire Delahunty: Please introduce yourself.

Aaron Thomas: I’m in Southeast Gippsland in Victoria on Gunaikurnai Country and I’m a dairy farmer by trade here in a little farmlet area called Won Wron … down there in the bottom southeast part of Gippsland.

I left a career in nursing to pursue my passion for dairy way back in 2007. And I started here with Paul and Lisa Mumford as a senior farm worker, progressed through to management then actually went on and share-farmed on a second property and in 2016 came back to Won Wron back in a management role and then six odd years later stepped up into a contract management set up with Paul and Lisa, which I’m now into my second season of doing.

CD: What attracted you to dairy in the first place?

AT: So when I was a young fella, I was doing casual work on dairy farms around my place where I grew up and it was just something that attracted me. I just love the idea of being outside, working with animals. I’m very much an animal person, and a people-person. So it just felt like this right thing. And I reckoned I could be successful at it. I don’t know, there’s just this real self-belief that this was an industry that I could have a crack at and do alright at it. But as a kid growing up, there were really no clear pathways to get into the industry, to be honest. And it definitely wasn’t something that was encouraged when I was going through, especially high school. There was really no encouragement to say, this is a good industry. This is a great opportunity.

Personally, there was a bit of a stigma about, you know, leaving finishing high school and going to work on a dairy farm. And, you know, obviously as a 17 or 18-year-old young fella, I didn’t want that stigma. And so I followed nursing. I really liked helping people.

When the opportunity came to leave nursing and pursue opportunity in dairy, I jumped at it. The rest is history. It’s been nearly 20 years in the industry.

CD: And it was a pretty pivotal door you knocked on when you did land on Paul and Lisa Mumford’s step. What happened for you in terms of your sense of being in the right place when you started working with them?

AT: Yeah, I reckon this conversation was probably going to lead us into something pretty deep. When I started in 2007, I didn’t realize how lucky I was that I had landed where I landed. I was given opportunities to thrive and to be the best I could. Some of those opportunities I took and some of those opportunities I probably failed at. But there’s nothing wrong with failure. It’s what you learn from those things that make you a better person.

It was in about 2012, 2013, when the family bought a second dairy business and said, ‘there you go, mate, there’s your opportunity to spread your wings’, so to speak. I took on the role as a share farmer where I was solely in charge of running a 200 cow farm about 30kms South West of where we farm now on a separate business. My family and I moved there and I was buying into the herd – we had a five year finance agreement with Paul and Lisa. After five years, I would own a herd of cows and, you know, the world was my oyster.

I could have stayed there and gone on to a bigger share or leased or done anything, the possibilities were endless. But in saying all that, there were major things bubbling away in my life. I had lost my mum to cancer in 2011. She was only in her 40s. I was in my late 20s. And that hit me like a ton of bricks. I never really dealt with that grief. 12 months before mum passing away, my grandma died, my mum’s mum. I probably didn’t realise the impact that that had, and so that really was never dealt with.

My mental health and everything else was spiralling just out of control, my marriage broke down and my partner left and took the kids with her. I was battling depression, battling anxiety, and battling alcoholism, so it was just the perfect storm. I battled away up there for about 12 months all on my own whilst my mental health and everything else was just completely out of control to the point where I attempted to take my life twice and failed. That was in 2016, and that’s when my world crashed in on me and I couldn’t hide anymore. I had the biggest mental nervous breakdown and pretty much collapsed completely. And that’s when I go back to my point about not realising how lucky I was because Paul and Lisa were there.

CD: What happened next for you personally, being supported by the Mumfords – and then further staying in the industry and recovering from all of that?

AT: So the ‘perfect storm’ was a combination of: Me. I was part of that storm with my mental health and my addiction. And then there was the storm of the milk price collapsing. There’s also the other part of the storm – where I was up at the other farm, we were actually in the worst drought. There was huge financial pressure on Paul and Lisa and on the businesses. I remember Paul saying to me “what do you want mate?” and I just said I want to come home.

When I came back to Won Wron where I was so familiar. I moved back into the little house that I’d been living in for a huge part of my adulthood. And then that’s when shit got real. That’s when I embarked on the journey of getting better. And Paul and Lisa were there the whole way, the whole way through it.

It was a really pivotal part of my life and I’m getting a bit choked up. The first sort of three years of moving back, I call that the fight of my life to survive and to beat it … well, hang on. You never ‘beat it’, but you learn to live with it. And that’s the part that I was so proud about was I was filling my toolbox with all the tools, all the information and everything I needed to combat it.

CD: It’s a testament to what the Mumford’s have seen in you since you were a youngster working with them.

AT: Yeah, 100%. I grappled for a long time with accepting that I may never be able to repay what they did for me. So one of the things that I decided was that, okay, the best way to repay them is to get better and stay better and stay in the industry and actually use it as an opportunity to share my story and make it a public campaign to share the story and give people the confidence to deal with whatever it is that they’re dealing with, whether it be mental health, addiction, or just taking that step to say, ‘I’m not quite right’.

CD: Do you remember what happened for you when you decided to share your story? That must’ve been daunting.

AT: So it was kind of a little bit accidental. People who loved me had put up with the shit, the lies. I was so untruthful, but the most important person that I was untruthful to was myself.

Sallie Jones (an alumn of Course 30 of the ARLP) from Gippsland Jersey. She found out that I’d been through this journey and invited me to be on her rural mental health calendar. And that was the cornerstone that really elevated me and gave me the confidence that I can share my story and I can do it in a way that’s impactful. And I was also encouraged by Sally to never play it down. Like you share your story, warts and all raw because if that’s how you want to share it then you should never apologize play it down to maybe protect someone in the audience. Just tell your story how it comes off your sleeve, off the cuff.

CD: What was the role of more formalised development opportunities in shaping what you’re doing?

AT: I had a little bit of a profile, from previous industry awards. I was runner up in the Weekly Times Farmer of the Year. The floodgates opened and I was probably looked at as being the person within the dairy industry that was sharing rural mental health and was advocating. There was a little time there where I was actually having to knock back engagements because I sort of needed to slow down a little bit. It was actually starting to wear me out. And that was a massive thing.

A program called Developing Dairy Leaders that was initiated by Dairy Australia with the support of Australian dairy farmers, they ran a program and that really opened my eyes up on the word ‘leadership’. I was still sort of struggling with the day-to-day life of dealing with anxiety and depression. I’d booted the grog, so that was all good.

I was still sharing my story and I was still dealing with depression and anxiety and still taking a fair whack of medication. But I went on, I was accepted into the program and I was like, right, this is the next jump up on advocating for rural mental health awareness.

A couple of years after finishing Developing Dairy Leaders, I stumbled across ARLF. And that’s when things get juicy.

CD: What was that experience like heading into the ARLP?

AT: It was definitely a program that has, without a word of a lie, changed my life. It’s actually changed my thought process.

It’s changed my default settings. I thought I had my life pretty much sorted out, I got over my breakdowns, I had my mental health under control, I had things in place to deal with my anxiety, and alcoholism beat, finished. I didn’t think I could really do much more apart from just keep getting physically and mentally stronger as time went on, and that program, it just flipped me upside down and it shook me by the legs. And it still shook out a few other demons that were so low lying that brought them to the top. Fair dinkum, apart from getting my health back and being a father, it’s up there in the top three of the best things that’s ever happened to me in my life.

CD: I can remember speaking to you about the first session for your cohort, which was in the Kimberley, and you talking to me about the notion of slowing everything down.

AT: Yeah. I probably still do have a little bit of that, bull terrier mentality and look, that’s fine. That’s just me. But when I stepped off the plane in Kununurra, I was, I was sort of, I went into it thinking this is going to be unreal.

When I got off the plane, I didn’t have a lot of information, and for someone with anxiety, that’s terribly troubling. Because I need to know what’s going on. I need to feel like I’ve got things under control. That was hard and that was actually making me pretty tired too, because I was so spending so much energy calming myself down and keeping myself focused on just minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour, day-by-day and it wasn’t until we got out to Mimbi … when you’re just immersed in 65,000 years of culture and it’s a place that’s always going to hold a very, very special spot in my heart because I just felt so spiritually grounded. I don’t know why.

When you’re sleeping on the ground in the red dirt and just immersed in an amazing 65,000 years of Indigenous culture, I just felt like I had this overwhelming feeling of respect and it was respect also to myself and to everybody around me. It’s really hard to find the words to articulate it. But it actually taught me to that slowing down is a way of going faster and that really was such a pivotal changing thing in me. It has changed me as a person probably for the rest of my life.

CD: You recently were speaking at the National Farmers Federation National Forum on rural mental health and wellbeing. What was that like?

AT: The NFF gig was actually a true testament at the power of what the Australian Rural Leadership Foundation has, because it was an ex-employee of the Foundation who moved on to the NFF that reached out and said, hey Aaron, we would like you to come and be a panellist on rural mental health. So that’s really, absolutely a bit special to mention that the actual ARLF has again allowed me to have these opportunities to speak. One, it was incredible that our peak national body is spending time and energy in this space. I absolutely applaud them for that.

My panel session was with the lady that founded Sober in the Country, Shana Whan. So her and I, we were asked to speak about the farming perspective. I didn’t feel like what I had to say was going to change the world. It gave me an opportunity to let lots of different people know from lots of different cross industries in rural mental health that there’s still a lot of work to do. And I probably gave some of the mental health organisations out there a bit of a smack on the wrist – there’s still a lot of work to do. I think there’s so much more that can be done with the amount of money that is being generated by key mental health organisations. And I don’t shy away from that because we are still losing people every day.

After I finished saying what I said, I actually got a standing ovation. I got quite emotional because I doubted myself yet again. And then I realized that I was validated. I went, hang on, why did I doubt myself?

I think some really good stuff is going to come out of that forum. Hopefully something really amazing will come out of that forum to support agriculture, not just dairy; to support rural and remote communities among Australia.

CD: What can those of us on the ground watching someone struggle or trying to support a community under pressure, do ourselves?

AT: The problem is with mental health, especially when you’re dealing with individuals is that it is very individual. Everybody suffers in a different way. So, the unfortunate thing is there actually is no one ‘glove’ fits all.

It would be so easy if it was because then you just, you know, boom, problem solved. But every community is different. What could work in a Northern Victoria community might not work in my community because of the demographics and the people within that community. It’s such an individual journey that people and communities go on when this problem is raised. The one bit of advice that I would say is never give up on someone or something. And if you think there’s an issue, just keep asking the question. And sometimes if an individual says, ‘I’m fine’, be curious, because normally your gut instinct is correct. If your gut’s telling you that you think this person or you think your community might be suffering, just keep being curious.

Sometimes all you gotta do is listen. You don’t actually have to give advice. And I think that’s important for bureaucrats and big organisations, especially when they’re dealing at a community level: sometimes just listen. Sometimes all people want is just an ear. They’re not seeking advice. They just want that safe space to share their feelings or vent.

CD: How do you maintain your own mental health and a good balance?

AT: By staying truthful. If I’m having a bad day, I tell people I’m having a bad day. And once upon a time, there is no way known I would have said that. Sometimes I know why I’m having a bad day and other times I don’t. But you know what? I’ve learned not to stress about it. Cause sometimes you just don’t have the answer. If I need to have a chill out, then I just be honest. I just tell people I’m not real good today. And I just stay in tune with how I’m feeling, how I’m going.

The the biggest thing is just being honest and truthful to myself and being comfortable with saying ‘it’s okay to have a bad day’. You know, you don’t have to be on top of your game 24-7 and definitely don’t pretend that you are. Just own it, acknowledge it, and sit easy with those feelings.

CD: Thank you, Aaron.

AT: And thank you to Gardner Foundation and to the ARLF for giving me the opportunity to do what I did and essentially get me to where I am today as a person that’s forever grateful for the opportunity.