Test of Will

by Glenn McGrath

  The reason the growth of the foundation—and its impact—particularly pleases me is that when it was formed in 2005 we funded the cost of one specialist nurse at the St George Hospital. We were driven by the notion that if we could help just one person by providing them with treatment and the support of someone that would allow them to realise they weren’t in the fight on their own, it would be worthwhile.

  It wasn’t easy because we had to raise $300,000 to fund the nurse. In the early days I would auction off gear I’d worn in Tests or one-day internationals to generate some money. However, as news of what we were trying to achieve became public, some of my sponsors offered their support and corporate clout. The general public also became involved, because I think people, especially Australians, like to back the underdog and they could see we were quite a small group who’d undertaken a massive fight. What it’s grown into ten years later, and what it represents to so many people, is quite incredible. The foundation has helped over 33,000 families, and I’m regularly told about the effect the breast care nurses and support from our head office have had. When I meet people who are going through their breast cancer battle, or who are supporting someone suffering, I often hear that the nurses have had an amazing impact on their quality of life. It’s something I always find moving, and those stories also help me to retain my focus. I was at the sprawling Miranda Westfield shopping centre one day recently when a woman walked towards me. I could see she had tears welling in her eyes. After stopping me, the lady gave me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek to thank me for the hope and the amazing care the foundation had given her when things in her life seemed quite bleak. Her reaction was a moment that really pinpointed the importance of the work that’s being done by the foundation.

  We have a team of over 30 people working at the McGrath Foundation office and it’s a hive of activity. I’m impressed by the day-to-day running of an organisation that coordinates everything from helping to organise a ball, to raising funds in a country town, to running breakthrough initiatives to educate young people about breast cancer and how to deal with an illness that may be affecting their mother or a beloved aunt. My role these days is as the organisation’s president, because it became too big for me to remain the chairman. The man who has assumed that position, John Conde, and our chief executive Petra Buchanan are marvels, and the success of the organisation can be attributed to the leadership and drive they provide. My role as president involves being on hand for the special events when we thank the people and corporations who have supported us over the years. I’m on the board and I make it a point to ensure I’m across everything that’s happening in the organisation, and in my public speaking engagements I always talk about the foundation. It’s very rare that a day has passed by in the last seven years when I haven’t spoken about the work and goals of something that started with a mission to try and make a difference to one person’s life. I have no doubt the reason why people hold the McGrath Foundation in high esteem is because they can see the immediate and tangible difference their donation is making to lives.

  In recent years there have been a number of debates about the breast cancer charity dollar being funded into research programs that are trying to find a cure for the disease. Advocates for those groups say they should be given the donation over groups such as the McGrath Foundation that offer care. It’s an argument I’m loathe to buy into. I wholeheartedly agree research is crucial, but I also believe you can’t overlook the plight of the people who are going through the illness now. I’ve seen their lives with my own eyes, I’ve heard their voices and they deserve help; they’re entitled to dignity and they need to know that they matter—although I’m not suggesting for a moment that the research advocates don’t also share that view. Breast cancer is far too big an issue to be simply boiled down to a battle between the labs and the lives. There should be enough generosity and goodwill in our society to ensure everyone can play their role in the battle and the quest, because ultimately we are all seeking the same outcome.

  When $1.5 million was raised in donations after Jane passed away, it was thought that, if given the choice, she would have liked for that money to be set aside for an educational program. In time it provided the foundation with funding for a project called Curve Lurve, which is designed to teach teenage girls about their bodies and to not only gain an understanding of the telltale signs of breast cancer, but also to educate them about what they ought to do if they should discover a lump one day. It’s an awareness program available to both sexes because breast cancer affects the whole family, and, despite what people might think, men aren’t immune from the impact of this disease. It’s important that people become familiar with their body and understand what their ‘normal’ is—and what’s not. It’s important for everyone to know themselves well enough to realise when something isn’t right. One of the organisation’s initiatives includes a so-called ‘caravan of lurve’ nicknamed ‘Curvey’ that travels around the nation. The young Aussie women who visit it are encouraged to observe the shape and appearance of their breasts and nipples in a mirror, firstly with their arms by their sides before lifting them above their heads to have another look. It’s simply a part of teaching them to realise what their ‘normal’ is. They’re instructed by a nurse on the correct way to feel their breasts and nipples and to keep an eye out for anything that appears to be out of the ordinary. Finally, those who visit the caravan are taught to appreciate that breasts come in different shapes and sizes. The most important message we want them to take away is that if there’s something that seems abnormal they should head straight for the doctor, because early detection is vital. While I do have my reservations about social media, the foundation has developed a very useful app, which reinforces the Curve Lurve steps. It’s an effective tool that not only encourages breast awareness but allows the user to personalise their profile, and also keeps them informed of the latest news; there is also a section where they can document anything they might find and they can even use the app to set a reminder each month so that they remember to self-examine.

  The positive experience Jane and I had with her breast care nurse in 2003 gave us a focus to start the foundation boots and all. The nurse was someone who offered guidance and advice, but I learned she was also someone who Jane could vent her frustrations to, and someone who she could discuss her fears with without feeling as though she was being judged. These nurses provide comfort during the testing times.

  The foundation identified the outback as an area that needed help. We realised there was no breast cancer support network for people living there. Fighting breast cancer, which is already traumatic enough, was made even tougher in the outback because patients had to pay to travel to their nearest city for treatment, which could mean time away from their families and a host of costs. After a lot of discussion it was decided we would pay the wage for a breast care nurse to be based in the bush. Then the numbers began to increase: from one to two, and then from two to three. We then decided to try to gather an army of nurses in the outback; and there was no looking back.

  Not just anyone can be a McGrath breast care nurse; it’s a demanding job and requires a person who is giving, caring, compassionate and considerate. They also need to have completed their first unit of breast cancer nursing. The foundation has identified the importance of continually upskilling the nurses and providing them with an allowance so they can attend training every year to increase their knowledge. Above all I view our nurses as courageous people with big hearts. Every year we have a conference where we get as many of our nurses as possible to attend, and it’s quite amazing—humbling, really—to see them in the one room. They definitely have a calling that’s very special, but I’m afraid the reality is that what they go through during the course of their working week is tough. The job is incredibly stressful and it’s a credit to their characters that each nurse continues, despite knowing it comes with the very real risk of heartache because not everyone survives. We are fully aware of the toll the
ir important work can have on them and we offer support for our nurses, which is something that I not only rate as very important but as essential.

  When I write about cricketers such as Sachin Tendulkar, Brian Lara, Shane Warne and Steve Waugh, I use the word ‘great’ to highlight they belong to the best of the best. The problem I’m always confronted by when I need to describe my thoughts about the McGrath Foundation’s breast care nurses is that mere words don’t do them justice. I think they’re in a league of their own and to simply hail them as ‘great’ doesn’t cut it. From talking to them and learning about their motives for embracing a life that isn’t easy, I’ve come to the conclusion that perhaps the best tribute I can offer is to say these nurses—through their selflessness and a desire to provide a pillar of strength and a tender shoulder to cry on—set standards very few of us could ever hope to match.

  MCGRATH BREAST CARE NURSES—THE FACTS

  • Breast care nurses are registered nurses who are trained to act as patient advocates, who coordinate the care for women experiencing breast cancer, and support their families and their carers.

  • They provide accurate information, support and referral to services.

  • It costs about $380,000 to employ each full-time McGrath breast care nurse over a minimum three-year period.

  • To become a McGrath breast care nurse, a candidate must have relevant postgraduate qualifications in either breast care nursing or cancer nursing.

  • Most McGrath breast care nurses have a background in oncology, breast care, women’s health and, in some cases, psychology.

  • The McGrath Foundation currently offers four scholarships through the Australian College of Nursing, which are open to registered nurses residing in Australia.

  • The support of a McGrath breast care nurse can significantly help improve a patient’s quality of care because they provide one main source of information and contact throughout the patient’s treatment plan.

  • Support from a McGrath breast care nurse can help to greatly minimise the stress and trauma of a breast cancer diagnosis for the patient and the patient’s family.

  • A McGrath breast care nurse is available to help a patient or family experiencing breast cancer at any point during diagnosis and treatment. If you or someone close to you hasn’t been referred to a McGrath breast care nurse in your area, please make direct contact to receive help.

  • The McGrath Foundation is working hard to achieve our goal of providing access to a McGrath breast care nurse for every Australian family battling breast cancer. Sadly, this is not currently achievable, but the foundation is determined to work towards realising that outcome.

  • They are self-referable and a totally free service.

  6

  SELLING THE FARM

  I love the fact I’m working with my hands and producing something, but you’ve got to be mentally fit to survive it …

  Rural Victoria is slowly dying, communities are getting smaller, support is getting less. But every day the sun comes up. You just get back into it and do it.

  —David Jochinke, Australian farmer

  Even though I left our family farm at breakneck speed in a cloud of dust to pursue a cricket career with Sutherland District Cricket Club 26 years ago, I had spent so much time out in the paddocks and working the land at Lagoona I doubt whether the dirt could ever be completely scrubbed from underneath my nails—and I wouldn’t want it to be. While I now live on the shores of Gunnamatta Bay, 450 kilometres from the 485-hectare sheep and wheat farm I called home at Narromine, my affinity with the farmer still runs deep. I have a 13,750-hectare property 160 kilometres north-west of Burke in New South Wales that my brother Dale runs, and we have 4000 sheep, mainly Merino ewes with Dorset rams, and a few head of cattle.

  I deeply admire the courage of the farmer. They’re Australia’s ultimate gamblers because they put everything on the line whenever they plant a crop. They’re betting on the rain to come at the right time when they plant the seed, and they’re banking on it not to rain at the crucial time of harvesting. I also value the strength of rural communities, and they need that foundation because it seems to help pull everyone through during the tough times; and such is the ebb and flow of life in the bush, there’s plenty of tough times.

  As much as I love the outback and its people, I’m fearful for their future. What has been a tough occupation—ever since a bright spark stuck a stick into the soil in 10,000 BC and threw some seeds into the furrows he’d scraped to grow grain—is getting even harder. And not just due to the traditional hardships of drought, flood, fire, frost and plagues that Mother Nature serves up from time to time. It’s becoming harder to make a decent living in the Australian agricultural sector. Farmers are accused of whingeing when they complain that supermarkets are selling two litres of milk for two bucks as a ploy to lure customers in to buy other goods. But the farmer knows that that practice will eventually destroy the dairy industry.

  My younger brother Dale is an exceptional farmer. He’s hardworking and knowledgeable, and if ever a man was born to work the land, it’s him. However, even he sometimes questions whether the hard yakka and heartache is worth his while. Sometimes it feels as though people in the city don’t put too much thought into where their bread, butter, fruit and meat come from when they go to the shops—roll their eyes and say ‘they’re whingeing again’ when farmers complain about the price of milk in supermarkets. Dale recently challenged me to name a profession where the workers would be happy to accept the same wage they received 20 years ago because, as he pointed out, that’s what is happening to farmers—As the Australian Bureau of Statistics notes, a litre of milk was $1.03 in 1994. The country kids see what’s happening to their parents and they’re voting with their feet: they’re leaving the farm to seek jobs in the city, and by doing so are joining the 89 per cent of the Australian population who live in urban areas.

  In 2012 Sara and I were appointed ambassadors for The Year of the Farmer, which was an initiative to acknowledge the contribution the people on the land make to the national economy and the community. It was a very positive concept, which reiterated Aussie farmers produce almost 93 per cent of the nation’s daily domestic food supply; 99 per cent of the 134,000 farm businesses in Australia were family owned and operated; that there were 307,000 people throughout Australia employed in agriculture; and that including the affiliated food and fibre industries the sector contributed 1.6 million jobs to the economy. We also learnt the average local farmer grows enough food to feed 600 people, 150 here in Australia and 450 overseas, and I reckon the bureaucrats described the situation perfectly as ‘punching above our weight’.

  The Year of the Farmer also highlighted the many challenges our farmers face. For instance, the average age of an Australian farmer was 52—a whopping 12 years above the national average for other occupations—while in the year leading up to 2012, some 18,000 people had abandoned the agricultural sector. To put that into context, that’s five times the population of Narromine. Allied with the age-old curses of drought, crippling debt and frost, and with no relief on the horizon, farmers are buckling under the stress, and it cuts me deeply to think suicide is viewed by some as their only escape. In 2014 the federal politician Bob Katter said Australia’s four big agricultural sectors of sheep, cattle, dairy and sugar cane were ‘going straight down the chute at 100 miles an hour’ and farmers, who he described as ‘the toughest people this nation has ever produced’, were crumbling. Katter claimed a farmer was committing suicide every four days. While that figure was questioned by critics who said it was based on data from the 1980s and ’90s, the message that there’s a serious problem unravelling beyond the city limits can’t be ignored and it must be addressed. In 2006 the former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett, in his post-political capacity as chairman of beyondblue (a not-for-profit charity that has raised awareness for people with anxiety and/or depression), told the media during the midst of a terrible drought that he feared for the wellbeing of
his nation’s embattled farmers: ‘My fear is that when under prolonged stress and, when they see their assets totally denuded of value, that we will see an increase [in suicides].’ While Katter’s figure was shot down by the academics, I think it’s worth noting that studies by the Australian Institute for Suicide Research and Prevention found Queensland’s agricultural workers and farmers were twice as likely as the general population to kill themselves. If that isn’t a wake-up call to politicians and bureaucrats of the suffering and heartache that’s occurring in the woolsheds, the wheat fields and sugarcane fields of their country, I don’t know what on earth is.

  The federal government released its Agricultural Competitiveness White Paper in July 2015, which included plans for tax changes, putting money away in farm management deposits, sending five new agricultural counsellors overseas to open up new markets for Australian food, setting aside money for roads and dams infrastructure, and encouraging investment in water infrastructure and fencing that will double as drought preparation. Despite this, I remain concerned that they continue to give the green light to foreign and local energy companies who, in their insatiable hunt for coal seam gas (CSG), will leave wastelands in areas with soil that’s so rich in nutrients it should actually be fenced off and protected to help Australia feed a global market that demands ‘clean’ food.

  Australia has shifted its economic focus from the primary industries to energy. Foreign companies are competing with local companies to drill holes, about the diameter of a dinner plate and up to a kilometre beneath the ground, in their hunt for CSG in some of the nation’s richest agricultural areas. I’ve read about the many jobs it will supposedly create, and the billions of dollars the industry will inject into the economy, and I’ve heard talk that liquid gas fields will turn Central Queensland into Asia’s answer to Saudi Arabia in terms of wealth, but at what cost? If prime agricultural sites around the nation are lost, we’ll pay for it in the long run when we realise we sold out our opportunity to be the food bowl for Asia. The United Nations estimate that the current growing global demand for food and fibre means that by 2050 the world will require productivity to increase by 70 per cent in order to meet the global population’s needs. I think Australia ought to protect prime agricultural land by putting fences around it to feed what’s becoming an ever-increasingly hungry world. I’m not anti-mining, but I do oppose a policy that has us selling off the farm for a quick cash grab.