July 2003, Penang, Malaysia. Eighteen months after my marriage ended, my children had just flown home after a two-week visit. I could still hear them in the apartment. I made up my mind, called a mate, and left a message telling him exactly where my head was at. He arrived before I made the ultimate mistake that would have not only cut my life short, but had a resounding impact on everyone I knew, or had known. More than 20 years later, early on New Year's Day last year, I was lying in bed with the whole thing planned, how, when, where. I was at the bottom of a spiral I couldn't see a way out of. Two close calls, decades apart. I'm telling you this not for sympathy, but because I want you to understand I'm not writing this from the outside looking in. Thursday 10 September is R U OK Day. Flyers will go up in offices around the country. There'll be morning teas, water-cooler conversations, meetings about how to spot when someone's struggling and how to ask if they're okay. It's a good instinct. But doing this once a year isn't achieving what it set out to, and I want to explain why, using my own life as the evidence. The bed that started it At the start of December 2024, my son, his wife and my two grandsons visited from interstate. I was the happiest I'd been in years. Then they left, and in the excitement of having them around, I'd let go of the one thing that had always kept me steady, routine. I stopped making my bed. I stopped renewing my medication. I stopped leaving the house, stopped talking to anyone. One small change had rippled into four weeks of unravelling, and I hadn't even noticed it happening. At three o'clock on 1 January last year, three things ran through my head: I couldn't let my sons' final memory of me be finding my body. Who would even miss me? And how had I got here? The answers came fast, the lapsed medication, the vanished routine. So I made a decision. I stayed in bed a little longer, then got up, made the bed, showered, made a cup of tea. The routine came back, and the fog started lifting with it. The two challenging points in time were 22 years apart, but the same thing sat underneath both, my baseline had shifted, and nobody, including me, caught it early enough. I'm in a good place now. I know my triggers, I know my own signs. That doesn't mean the black dog is gone for good, it still turns up now and then, uninvited. But I know it when it does, and that's the difference. Why "are you okay" isn't enough I've been saying it for years: you need to know your people. Not just the people you work with, but the people you love, your mates. Know their baseline , what's normal for them, what their good place looks like, well enough that you notice the moment they drift from it. That's not "are you okay?" That question lets people off the hook with one word. "Yeah, good." Job done. Especially for men, especially rural men, who are told from childhood to suck it up. What actually opens a conversation is closer to: "you've seemed a bit off lately, what's going on? I've got time, I don't need to be anywhere." The numbers back up how urgent this is, particularly here. In New South Wales this year, 391 suspected or confirmed suicide deaths were reported between January and May, 178 of them people living in regional or rural areas, against 207 in Greater Sydney, despite the city holding by far the larger population. Men accounted for 288 of the 391. In 2024, the last confirmed full-year figures, 935 people died by suicide across the state, 18 lives a week, and the regional rate ran close to double the metropolitan one. In the past week alone, I've known of four people in my own area, farmers, shearers, people living rural, who've taken their lives. Action without enough result There's more support standing up than there used to be. Trademutt's TIACS ("This Is A Conversation Starter") shirts push tradie mental health. Flanno for a Farmer raises money each August for farming families under pressure. Locally, there's a shearing competition run in memory of a shearer we lost. All of it good, all of it genuine. But there's a lot of action and not a lot of result, and I think the reason is simple: telling men to suck it up, to not show emotion, has never worked, and no fundraiser fixes a culture on its own. As a veteran, I have access to support most people in rural New South Wales don't. The process is slow and it's hard, but it exists. For farmers and rural workers, it barely does. That gap needs to close, and it starts with something that costs nothing: knowing your people well enough to catch them before they hit a balcony railing or a bed they can't get out of. So today, over your cup of tea, look around. See if you can spot the person near you who isn't okay. Put a hand on their shoulder and say: I see you. I'm here. And mean it. If this brings up anything for you, Lifeline is on 13 11 14, the Suicide Call Back Service is on 1300 659 467, MensLine Australia is on 1300 789 978, and Open Arms (veteran and family counselling) is on 1800 011 046, available 24/7.
