G'day leaders. I really enjoyed this podcast. It's an interview with a fabulous former pilot
called John Davison. He was a colleague of our Captain Michelle for a long time and he's got
some fantastic stories about flying at the front of the plane and what he's been doing since he
retired from flying. He's now flying drones and it's quite an interesting story. He also shared
how he was recently diagnosed with ADHD and how he's been able to turn it into his superpower.
Enjoy. Why do it count backwards? Oh no, we're now recording. What? Hello Captain.
Come fly with me, let's fly, let's fly. What are we going to talk about? I don't know.
So leadership, life and everything else. Yeah.
We're live in Geelong. Yeah we're in Geelong but we're recording. In Geelong and we have a special
guest and Michelle I'm going to let you introduce him because you know him much much better than I
do. I do. This is John Davison who I know from aviation. Many moons. Many moons yes. It's been
um well Rex. Rex yeah you were one of our instructors at the start. That's right I was
and then that's I remember myself and Chris at the back and now and then we went to Virgin together.
Yeah we did our endorsement on 737. Yeah we were crash buddies and then we did our paychecks
sim together. Yes we did on my birthday too it was remember. That's right so then we had
celebratory beers at 7am at the airport. 7. 7am. How many bars were open at 7am at the airport?
At the airport. Airport. 24 hours. That's right. As you do. All right so known each other for a long time.
We have and then so yeah John and we were on the 737 together we started together and then you
went off on the A330. A330 yeah just realized domestic wasn't for me. That's right. Yeah I
had to do something different. So what routes did you fly? I was at the start it was only really one.
The routes. Sorry Ruth routes. Ruth routes. I knew what you were saying.
Perth and it was really exciting we either went Melbourne Perth, Sydney Perth, Brisbane Perth.
Okay so a lot of Perth. Yeah I'm a simple bloke so we just kept it as simple as possible and
yeah. I may have flown with you. I got a Perth of habit. You probably would have. Yeah it's um
yeah it's quite funny. Thanks for making us get to the airport at midnight. That's that's that's fun.
I hate getting to the airport at midnight. It's just you know how the plan starts isn't it Michelle?
It's totally different how it finishes on most trips you do. Yeah so a lengthy career in aviation.
Yeah. What did you learn sitting at the front of the plane? I've had the privilege of listening
to all of Michelle's fantastic stories but what about yourself? What sort of lessons did you learn?
Well you know it's like what you talk about on the podcast and I've become passionate in human
factors and non-technical skills so yeah and which led to um teaching it, facilitating it in Virgin.
Okay if you could just come a bit closer. Yep that's it. Yeah facilitating it at Virgin and um
doing course builds and things like that within the company uh which led to then like um sort of
like a welfare person sometimes so if people were getting in um not achieving a level that they
should be as a pilot I would get called up and just um just have a general chat was always um
not formal. I might be flown to Perth a couple of times just to sit in the cafe at the airport
and talk to some guys who were failing checks. Okay. Um and you know and there could be various
reasons and that was part of my reason for being there was just to talk in an informal situation
and see what is going on with that individual and yeah see if we can help them out. So you
taught human factors similar to Michelle? Yeah. Okay. Yeah Michelle and I. John was my boss.
Ah there you go. I think I helped you out a few times. I wouldn't say boss.
So I like I like learning that that that pilots um learn about human factors so the things that
could contribute to you know um I won't say accidents but um. Well they are accidents and
incidents aviation is pretty much all human factors really. Ever since the introduction of the jet
what did they realize suddenly it's not the mechanics that are failing it's the human behind
it. Okay. Yeah. So we learned from the 70s onwards that we may need to you know increase our awareness
of how how we operate and integrate with people and machinery. And it was not only pilots it's
every human touch point there was a an issue basically. Because yeah they first thought it
was the pilot's pilot error. Yes. But then we started to realize well cabin crew, maintenance
stuff, baggage, all had a part to play. So I guess when you're teaching it you'd be telling stories
about incidents that have happened. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have any off the top of your head that you
can. Oh for my my type of stories yeah there's all you know there's lots that happens quite often.
Yeah. Um you know I remember listening to your podcast and you told the story about the fuel
scenario. Yeah. I've got a similar one and I didn't I I continued on the flight it was like
we rocked up to Perth got the weather. Yep. And like Michelle says you can read between the lines
of how the weather's going to change. You know it's never most of the time it's never as it's written
on the forecast. And you can see there's little indicators and you go something's going to change
you. And we used to have a rule of thumb didn't we Michelle. When if there was an inter which
means take an extra 30 minutes where the fuel because weather could change. We would take a
tempo which is 60 minutes. So we'd always go to that next level just as a mitigator. Thank you
for saying that. Yeah. Yeah. So that was a rule of thumb wasn't it. Yeah. If it was an inter take a
tempo if it was a tempo take an alternate. I love it. I love that you guys have your own language.
Michelle and I have coffees in the morning and she tells me stories and she's using language
nobody else could possibly identify. But yeah I like that. That was good. And I remember rocking up and I could see
that we were going to need I think was an inter for memory. And it's like well let's look at it. I'm
in my head because I rock up I have my figures in my head already. Yep. You let the skipper
come up with his idea and you sit there and you go sort of like a negotiation buying a car isn't it.
And he was pretty much said no there's no requirement. So we're going to take the legal
fuel. Yeah. Which is the extra 30 minutes. Technically I didn't have a leg to stand on because
what he's doing is exactly right. Yeah. And but all it means to me is I've got to be at a higher
level alertness when we're flying over because you're going over the boat you lose radio
transmission sometimes you're on HF or via data link. So you just know that you've got to be on
the ball looking for weather updates because you're thinking things are going to change anyway. So
that's what happened. And yeah we fly along the beam Adelaide. So we're doing one of the deep
south routes. So we're right off the coast. Yeah. That's usually my time to go right. Let's start
thinking about Melbourne and pulled up the weather and sure enough we needed that that extra 30
minutes where the fuel you can make it and we didn't have legally requirement to continue. OK.
So at that stage you know it's like the skipper who had his pretty much his feet up on the dash
and didn't care. Cool. And I loaded him sort of printed off the weather and I said there you go
mate. We now need some to find some more fuel here in the air up here. Yeah. Yeah. And you know I'd
already been thinking about it. Yeah. And but you're on route once you're actually in the air. Your
requirements do change from when you're on the ground before you go. So you can get creative with
your pencil. Yeah. To make it. But did you have enough even with. Yeah. We in the end we had enough
but it was prompting the skipper to come to that extra hour of alertness to let's start thinking
about how we're going to do this. I already thought you know we can also increase altitude.
We can slow down and play with the figures. The skipper's only idea was let's bring them up see
if we can get the traffic holding taken off or any reduced. And that was the only idea you come
up with. And certainly came back and said no. So then we had this problem. So you know you just
have to work with the skipper and sort of prompt them because you can't go right let's do this. I
can't because then the command gradient changes. Suddenly UFOs now in control of what's going on.
Yeah. So you've got to be very diplomatic when you're sitting in the right hand seat. You've got to
lead them into making a decision and without them getting upset. And there you go. You've got to
maintain. It's very fragile. So you'd have quite strong powers of persuasion and influence I'm
guessing. Sometimes I can. Yeah my wife actually hates it because she knows sometimes I do it
with her. Okay don't use those same things with me. I call it planting the seed and then letting it
fester. It becomes their idea. Yeah and she thinks I'm playing those mind games with her.
I don't. So honey I'll never do that with you. But yeah it's you know I use that with my children
as well. I don't use a confrontational type of parenting with my kids. It's plant a seed. Let
them think about it. And they come up with their own ideas. They might make mistakes but
who cares. Making mistakes are great. So they learn from it even better. But yeah back to the
flying. It's you know it's one of those things where you've got to nurse the situation through.
And yeah but there's multiple of those. I had a really bad one coming out of Bali where we lost
all the toilets weren't functioning. I think I've told you about that one. No you haven't.
No. So passing 18,000 feet and with study after I realised that 18,000 feet there's a pressure
switch and if something goes wrong it shuts the toilets off. And I didn't realise that one at the
time. It wasn't in our little handbook. Remember that little handbook we had? What was it called?
I'm picturing all these guys in Bintang, Singlets, Sunburn and probably a few Cairns in. Exactly.
And yeah that's what I that was the immediate thing that went through my head was like oh we've
got Bali belly on board definitely and we have no toilets and we have six hours six and a half hours
of flying back to Melbourne. There is a requirement within so many hours you need so many toilets
functioning so there are none. And with so many people on board as well. So yeah. Yeah and the
skipper at that time said oh yeah no worries. It was the cabin crew who came up and she says oh we've
got no toilets and the skipper goes yeah okay no worries. So I'm looking at him going okay well
what are we going to do? Let's manage this problem. I said oh we're going to do we ring up the company?
Do we want to turn around because we're only passing 80,000 feet we're not that far away from
Bali. Denver say so let's turn around go back or no we're going to Melbourne. Six hours. Six hours.
Six and a half hours. Was the skipper's car parked in Melbourne? Yeah. The funny thing is I'm like why is he motivated to keep going?
He had to pay for three days. Yeah and then so once again you gotta all right let's play this game again.
Yeah. You know the diplomatic game and the assertive game and you know it's like where do you
how do you elevate and what stages starts going through your head and trying to prompt again you
know um uh Perth's not that far away. Yeah. Or do we? The international airport. Even better let's just call the company and let them make the decision for us
because that's an easy one you can't stuff that one up because it's there then they take the responsibility.
Responsibility test. I think you did responsibility test. There we go so yeah hand it back to them. No.
No mate we're going to Melbourne and I said oh let's just call the company up on HF anyway
and we'll um we'll just see what they think. He actually physically slapped my hand away.
He said what point you don't get we're going to Melbourne and I'm like okay so this went from
okay now we're we're not going to go anywhere else like is this a an area where I've need to
take control of the aircraft. It's not. No one's going to die. No the aircraft's not falling out of the room. I don't know. I don't know.
The number of passengers out the back of a barley belly so I think there could be. Yeah there could be some serious sicknesses and there was. It actually got on the news.
That's what I was going to say. This captain is clearly not thinking about what's going to happen when they land and all these
passengers go straight to the media straight to social media. Yeah and and I wasn't thinking about that at the time but then as you're coming into land I thought yeah there's
people are probably going to start. That was my first thought. Yeah. Well I remember Pete Sherry I did my command course with him and he said always remember what is the front page going to say.
Yeah yeah and you know it going back a bit it was actually a Jetstar flight to Darwin had been cancelled so because we only had 60 passengers originally and then suddenly we had like 130 passengers from the Jetstar flight that was cancelled going to Darwin.
And I said listen we'll make a lot of Jetstar passengers happy if we divert to Darwin. Then they don't have to go to Melbourne and then catch the flight back to Darwin. Yeah.
How about and their 24 hour engineering we could log in there we could actually get it fixed probably back down to Melbourne within our duty time wouldn't disrupt anything. And that's he just shut off wasn't interested got his iPad out started watching a movie.
And so then I had to click into it. How do we mitigate what's about to happen. So we've got three toilets that don't function but capacity to still hold something.
Right. So we shut two toilets off do a P.A. saying we have an issue with the toilets. We're going to live it in use. Only people that really need to go can go. We're reducing the amount of alcohol just because that flushes through looking at turning research fans off because once the plane gets full it starts getting smelly.
All because the skipper wasn't entertaining any other. Wow. Wow. So yeah we flew all the way to Melbourne. You did. Yeah. Flew all the way to Melbourne when I landed on runway to seven I was actually scared to pull because yeah I've got a nose high attitude as I was flaring because I thought I might spill.
Yeah. And as we landed a made him on who's the engineer who helped me start field masters as well one of the original status of field masters. He was get off the air bridge getting on and he goes what happened. And I said and he as he walked in he could smell and later on talking to me goes that was disgraceful.
It was everywhere. It took him ages that day. She'd take it offline for a little bit. Wow. Wow. Yeah. And he's one of them protected ones from back in the 80s and they would they told him like it was funny because then a week later I was rostered to fly with them again.
Yeah. And when you go to the terminals you print off what's wrong with the aircraft. Yeah. Toilets are unserviceable and it was going to Sydney. So it wasn't a big deal. One I think one was so I picked the piece of paper up and threw it at him and I said what is it with you and bloody toilets.
And he goes oh yeah I nearly lost my fourth strike because of that. Yeah. So he was like you got put on probation again and they were thinking about it but yeah people would have helped him out because he is a protected species. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Wow. I'm a bit speechless. Yeah. I could only imagine being one of the passengers down the back and knowing what I know now about that story.
It all came down. There was other options. The thing is though as well that this is a leader. So this is your boss. Yeah. And you can't storm out. Yeah. Hold on a second. You told me a story about a young lady stabbing the captain in the hand while he was having a heart attack. Yeah.
But you know you just quickly tell that story. Just give everyone. Yeah. I've tried to find it online and I can't. And John you may know actually it was one that we had and I can't remember which year it was in NTS. Human factors courses. So the story you told in the training.
It was and it was the female Chinese female F.O. and she her captain stabbed had a heart attack on short on final with his hands on the controls and because of the heart attack he actually grasped the thrust levers and he was deviating off slope and she kept calling it and he wouldn't release or listen.
So she grabbed the pen out of her pocket and stabbed the back of his hand which the reflex action he released his grip and she was able to take over smart person. Yeah. I don't know if I could ever think of that at that moment in time.
I would have just been silly and rested. The thing the thing that I think we why we told that story is because of the state cockpit gradient. Yeah. And because in the culture different cultures. Yeah definitely. And the fact that it was male female in that culture and for her to have
the presence of mind to do that but to do it even because it may you know she's harming him and yeah yeah but she saved the aircraft. That's amazing you know you credit to her. It's good thinking. Yeah. And I love those stories of outside the box here.
So what I'm going to do is stab that person to reflex to take an award for it. Yeah. That's really good. Yeah. I would have been silly and just try to wrestle him.
Well what got you into the air in the first place. What got you into aviation. The old man was loved flying. Yeah. Never had the opportunity to be a pilot but tried to get in as an engineer but never quite made it and life changes things and ended up becoming an engineer or not an engineer technician electronics tech but always used to take me to the airport. Yeah.
You know you've got photos of me up front of telling the rain as a little kid. Yeah. The bug bit you. Yeah. It's where the bug bit me and do you also describe yourself as an aro sexual probably was back in the day. Not now. Yeah. Let's change now. It's an airline's ruined by love of aviation.
OK. Yeah. Yeah. How is that. I loved my G.A. flying. Yeah. So general aviation general aviation. Yeah. Thank you. If you need to explain that's OK. I'll try. I'm the dumbest. Yeah. You guys use language that no one understands. I was going to say sorry to you at the start about some acronyms or some pilot language we're about to talk.
I live 12 years in Canberra. I heard every two years. I can't. I have a skill to be able to see seek out a pilot in any room. I can see them. So we'll be at a restaurant and we're just eating a lovely meal and also Michelle sits up like what are those.
A meerkat. Yeah. She's looking around. She's looking around. Somebody said HUD or something. And then I won manual and then she's going across the restaurant. Hey what do you fly. And then he's going back and then having a conversation across the restaurant across everyone's head.
It's brilliant. And then after that we left like 40 minutes later and he goes I'll catch you later. Yeah. And you usually do you'd walk past the airport. Hey don't we just see each other. Yeah. It's you know when you did a few overseas trips obviously in the 330 and you'd rock up at the hotel room.
Then you know it's a crew hotel and purely crew because you go downstairs and it's just all these people and you thought just all men in jeans and sneakers and maxi dresses and expensive watches.
Because that seems to be a thing. It's by watches. They've got to get myself a tag your watch or something. Yeah. Yeah. So you can tell them from all the way in or else they'll tell you anyway.
Yeah exactly. So can you tell us the story about how you stopped flying and what you're doing now. Yeah. So COVID. But before then I started to dabble in drugs. Yeah. That same engineer that we're walked on.
Good friends. So it's Chris's brother who you know Chris. So the store and family who are quite well known in aviation circles.
So Dave was down the beach on holidays with him and he said I've just started a drone business. Do you want to get involved. And I said yeah. And that was about 2016. But things changed and we actually got nearly sued for having the same company name as another company up in New South Wales.
That was our first introduction to copyright and things like that. And we realised we didn't have a leg to stand on. We saw a top gun crane the other day. Yeah. We should be giving them free advertising.
How did they get away with that. Yeah. And yeah. So but yeah. So I was into drones then and we brought one of the first civilian thermal drones over. Had to sign paperwork for the Department of Defence to bring it over. And we thought we were going to do solar panel inspections and while we're flying because every pilot's got to have a sidekick.
We had we had a drone company. Yeah that's right. Yes. We almost started doing the training with you. Yeah. But yeah. So yeah. Had a previous experience with drones and I ended up after we shut that business down ended up just just a little business I had selling drones to farmers.
So driving into their properties because it's hard for a farmer to travel anywhere to find a drone and a lot of them like to see something in real life or play around with it have a see if it works on their property. So I sort of specialised in driving out to some weird farms which I just love doing anyway.
Just seeing these properties and teaching these fellows how to fly and fly the drone and use it for what they need to use it on the farm. Never made any real money out of it but I just enjoyed helping people out. And you know like one experience was a guy that was 75 had M for CMR struggling to get around his property getting in and out of the you taught him how to fly this drone.
I marked a cross on his lawn and said just take off from here every time and press the auto part and I've already made the flight pass for you. You'll see everything. And he nearly cried. He said you've just give me another five years on the property. Oh wow. So I thought here's a technology that's now changing people's lives.
He can do all these fancy inspections. Yeah. And plus all these mates thought it was fantastic. Here he is. Yeah. Up with the latest technology flying a drone around the property. So yeah, you can have a cup of tea. I sit the iPad there and just check the gates, the troughs, the feed points, the cows all from one spot. So yeah, so I continued doing it. It was another an older lady. She was about 82 living on the property herself now husband passed away and over the hill was the boundary of property and people were poaching.
So she wanted to try and catch them. So I took me a couple of days to train this lady how to fly a drone. And then she three days after teaching her she sent me some photos. I got the buggers.
She got the number plates. So changing people's lives. Like sheep or? No just deer. In that area is a lot of wild deer. We have big deer issues here in Victoria and people will poach on people's property, shoot illegally. Yeah. Yeah. So she found got the number plates and it was great.
But then when COVID happened, another mate, you know, Jimmy Jaran. Yeah. Yeah. So Jimmy and myself and we were sort of sat there and thought let's give this drone business a go like a real go.
And at that time, you know, I was as we found out I'm ADHD so I can't sit in a room or in a house for too long and my wife doesn't like it. I think aviation worked out really well because I was hardly ever at home.
So but being in COVID and being at home all the time I think Cal was about to kill me. So I had a tractor post driver and I went out fencing. Yeah. Because agriculture was accepted as a business.
So I used that money became quite successful that business and I use that money to build up Fieldmaster systems and pay Jimmy a bit of a wage to make phone calls and connections and build the business up. Dave come in on board and.
Yeah. And before you knew it. You know, we had one first few jobs there. We found it really hard because it's a technology that people don't know they need. And that's probably one of the hardest things is it's easy from a fencer because people know I need a fence done.
Yeah. For drones and they can see it as well. See it's proven. You know, they know what a fence is. Where drones is new and a lot of people, a lot of industries don't know they need a drone.
So it was really hard. We had to beat doors down parks Victoria and a few other organisations said, Oh, you'll never find deer or pigs out in the bush. The canopy is too thick. Thermal won't work.
And we just said, just give us a try. Give us a try. And then it was just one guy in Dika, which is like our DPI version of DPI here in Victoria.
He had some funding from the bushfire recovery from the 2025 and he said, I want to find out if the pigs are coming back in from New South Wales and I need you to follow that fire burn right through Victoria.
So he gave us their first go and it went from there and we built a reputation of these guys that we're the guys if you want to send into the middle of nowhere and find animals, then give us a call.
So yeah, and loved it because he used to sit there with the boys and think governments paying us to go camping and fly drones.
How good is this?
And yeah, so we've had our ups and downs like this year has been really bad with the economy. So especially governments.
You know, it's pretty easy to pull funding on looking for animals or our other side of the business is weed spraying with larger drones.
So weeds don't complain when there's no funding. So it's easy to pull that one. So we found at the start of the year that we really struggled.
And that's just part of business. Yeah, but it's starting to really pick up in the last two months. It's unbelievable.
You're doing what I tell the kids all the time. Either find what you love, make it your job or decide to love your job.
You've got two choices in life, but either one you're going to love what you're doing.
You've got to love it's we only get one shot at this. That's it. And I think we lose that fact.
Yeah. And we get stuck in that routine of getting up and doing what we know to do.
And, you know, you talk to pilots, they do it now because that's all they know.
And they think their skills can't be transferred to other industries. But I know now that those skills are pretty good.
I'm looking at someone right now who has transferred all of the skills that we often talk about how during life you're going to try different jobs and stuff like that.
But every single job, every single experience is another tool in your toolkit.
And Michelle's toolkit is so bloody big. If we printed out her CV, it would be crazy. You'd chop down half the Amazon.
Oh, you haven't said that for a few episodes. Thank you.
Yes. I think that's brilliant that you're using your passion and what you love. Yeah.
Oh, you actually look forward to packing the car up and going away for my drones.
So can we talk a little bit more about the ADHD if that's OK?
Because I'm really fascinated in that because I believe that all neurodivergence are superpowers.
Because I started to think this way. I've been a trainer for a very long time. And in one of my courses many, many years ago,
it was I had a bunch of IT people in the room and I've got a background in IT and we're all pretty geeky, nerdy sort of thinkers.
And this one kid, he was the youngest. And every time I asked a question, because we were doing I think it was leadership training,
and he was a young leader. And every time I asked a question, he had a very rambling but very poignant answer.
And the rest of the people are in the room and they're all quiet and shy.
And they're all looking at him thinking, you know, where's all this stuff coming from? And then but then they were almost judging him, right?
Yep. Because he always had an answer and they thought he was being a bit arrogant.
Anyway, I asked him, I asked a question and he started answering and he said, oh, and because of my asperges, and I said, go deeper on that.
And he did. And he said to talk about it. And then everyone in that room, none of them had heard the term before.
This was many, many years ago. And then he started to talk about how it helps him with this, but it doesn't help him with that.
And you can't recognize this, but it's a superpower there. And ever since then, I've loved talking about how we're all different and we all our differences give us superpowers.
So what's your superpower? Yeah, well, it's being able to think about solutions outside the square and practical stuff like the business partners and all that.
Know that John comes up with some really crazy ideas that make sense once we talk through it, because as you say that that gentleman you talk about, I can level on.
You really got to listen to what I'm saying to make sense of what I'm saying. Yeah, because my brain's already thought about it and moved on.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so you're down the track. Yeah, I don't structure the sentences too well.
But then once they listen to me, they could work. And then I think that's been a really good thing about our business is that we've got a couple of worlds firsts at Field Masters.
And I think it's because we're the ability to use all our superpowers like Alistair and Dave don't have the issues that I have, but they have engineering and technical skills.
So I come up with these hair, brain ideas of how we're going to solve someone's problem. Yeah, those guys will make it happen.
And so using all those skills, but my original ideas, it works and I can just see things in my head. I can see like all the angles.
I can see different from different angles. And so when someone comes to me with a problem, my brain's already ticking away.
I'm going to solve this problem. Yesterday, I was down here in Geelong talking to a nursery that wants to develop drone operations.
And they're giving me their problems. And I'm already my brains just starts ticking. And yeah, I've already come up with some crazy ideas that my business partners going, I don't know about that one job.
Just let me have a go. Let me try this one. Yeah. So yeah, I look at that as I can just see from different angles. I can see things that other people don't say.
Do you think that not knowing that you had ADHD, but why you liked GA more because there were always aviation always having to come up with solutions because we had very old aircraft and we landing in remote areas, weird places and had to be thinking on our feet all the time
about coming up with I had a landing struck failure. So I had to, you know, I had the town behind me and we reconstructed a landing strut. Yeah. And different get the airplane bogged during wet season up at North. Yeah. Yeah.
And so you're always having to it was something you whereas maybe airline flying because it's monotonous. It's on rails. Yeah. Thankfully for the passengers. But, you know, and I sort of think airlines was what sort of hid my ADHD because it's just routine.
You do the same thing over and I struggle with learning. I knew that like I've known that for a long time that but someone could teach me something on the board and I'm looking at it. I'm trying to focus. But it's just nothing happening.
And I had to struggle, you know, study three or four times harder than anyone else. I was gonna say learning to be a pilot is a lot of study. It is. How did you do it? I failed so many times. Yeah.
I think ATPLs don't ask me how many times I've tried to attempt exams. What seven exams that we used to have to do for even commercial. I think back in those days the commercial one was one exam. I think it's changed to seven. So it was one and ATPL was seven. Yeah.
And I could never afford to do courses. So I had to self study all the time. And so I just attend these tests and fail all the time. And they cost money. Yeah. Very. That's my probably my other superpower. If you tell me I can't do something.
I found that this is what kids have to learn. So many kids who have been diagnosed with ADHD, they have a go at something and they just give up. It's almost like they've been allowed to give up. Yeah. Whereas it is a superpower. If you push through.
Was there any technique that you use or if someone taught you something if you went to a course and was there a technique that where you could get it was it doing it or was it. Yeah, I had taught myself that I had to break through like reading the manuals. I have to break everything up into small pieces and go over that maybe five or six times and then keep asking myself what is that actually saying. Yeah. So I'd have to go over and go what is what do they mean by what what's just written in that paragraph. Go over it. Understand it.
Right. In my notes in John Oh's way. Yeah. So at this stage you didn't know you had ADHD. No. So you found a solution. Yeah. And you weren't holding yourself back. No. Because I remember in year 10. Chris just said you will never be a pilot. Yeah. And I've got actually plumbers apprenticeship. She had organized a plumbers apprenticeship. I know a similar story. Michelle. You'll never be a pilot. Yeah. You can't. You can't. Yeah. I remember listening. It's the same. Yeah.
Were you told that you'd have to wear tampons every flight. No.
Isn't it the funniest thing how we look back now and the way they look at females and flying and it's just we laugh now. Yeah. It must have been traumatic for you because you know I only just had a learning difficulty but you had a society.
Genital. Yeah. Society.
Society. Yeah. Yeah. And it's you know and now and you know you look at some of the old school female pilots. Yeah. You know and legends. Yeah. And they've paved the way. Michelle's one of them that's paved the way as well. And now you look at you know every now and again you look at these pictures of new courses coming through for cadetships mostly females. That's right.
Brilliant. Yeah. That's great. That's great. No I hope Michelle's will come out hopefully next year. I'm flabbergasted by some of the stuff that she had to go through. There are some secrets in there. Yeah. Some secrets.
Yeah. Yeah. As a male you know all you have to do is be really good at being social and drinking to become a pilot you know and it's not that hard. And pass the exams. Yeah. Michelle had to fight against everything else. Yeah. Yeah. We were one of the blokes.
the stigmas we were one of the blokes sometimes I'm thinking of one particular
female pilot who could drink most male pilots under the yeah yeah put us to
shame yeah once again alcoholism is huge social lubricant yeah what else are you
gonna do in an overnight yeah yeah yeah just becomes the norm
doesn't it yeah yeah unfortunately yeah but with your ADHD when you got
diagnosed were you actually how did you yeah funny is that we had a Vic Forest
contract so I don't know if you knew what happened here Victoria last year is
that um graded gliders caught injunction weren't allowed to chop forest down our
native timber anymore because supposedly killing the boreal animals in endangered
animals like graded gliders and yellowbellies so at the court injunction
said if Vic Forrester's chop anything else down they'd have to do surveys
before and it would be drone surveys thermal surveys at night so we were one
of the lucky contractors to get the gig and anyway I'm sitting out in the middle
of the forest with my one of my business partners Alistair and he goes a good
mate of mine has just been diagnosed with ADHD and John you are exactly like
him and he goes I think you should probably get tested I said it's funny
because I've always had in the background that because my nephews have
ADHD my family has a long history of alcoholism drug abuse from my mother's
side and you know all that as you learn later on that that's ADHD people really
high cases of alcoholism and drug abuse and so I've always had that in the back
of my mind you know what bugger it let's go and find out if I actually do have it
so I went and spoke to my doctor and my local doctor and he did the test and he
had a bit of a giggle to himself he goes yeah you do have it mate and he's known
me for a few years and he goes I'm pretty sure you had it you know I knew you had
it so I went to a psychologist or psychiatrist and specialist in it and
we did a couple of the official tests and I had to prove that I had it when I
was 12 years old and funny enough my dad still had all the reports from school
and now looking back at it as a 45 year old you know yeah you know John can't
focus John's disruptive you know John needs to stop rushing all these things
and the last appointment I had with the side actress before I was officially
diagnosed he just laughed and said it's amazing you achieved what you achieved
in your life he goes with the like as I achieved I ticked off every symptom so a
very high level ADHD he he says if I see someone with your level of ADHD you're
either a criminal or a drug abuser so yeah I'm thinking there's probably many
many pilots who have ADHD and I know it would like it I was asking before it
would it would it help you it would no no no the ADHD yeah what are the what are
the skills that it gives you that then contributes to your success yeah and it
does but then also I had a lot of deep anxiety that no one ever knew because I
always knew I wasn't as good as anyone else I always had this feeling in my
head that I'm not smart you know I have to do all this stuff I look at everyone
else passing their exams and doing everything and here's John I on his
fifth attempt at trying to pass something so I always thought I was like
an imposter okay level of everyone else and probably no one else knew that but
that's how I felt and but when I was diagnosed I was like something that
curtain came up yeah I thought yeah I know what's wrong and you know everyone
has that stigma about the medication but it's changed my life yeah so I'm back
to explain I'm back studying now so I would have an aversion to doing any
study because I just knew how bad it was and it was like getting nails drilled
into me if I had to try and read and I just thought it was a waste of time I
love your career it'd be almost PTSD I hate reading yeah I hated reading but
now I can sit in front of a screen and study and read and actually motivate
myself to do it thanks to the medication thanks to the medication yeah so for me
it's changed my life that's pretty yeah and for some you know this other it
doesn't work for everyone yeah but it worked for me that's all I can say and
I was glad that the the psychologist that put me on he thought the right
medication like it was also a binge eating so I'll show you probably knew I
was overweight I was always I just thought you were flying a widebody
that's what happens the widebody guys get wide bodies they do you watch them because you just get fed so well yeah and you're on the longer flight
coffee and bikis or yeah it because it because my body doesn't produce dopamine
as you know when you start researching about ADHD I was looking for that hit
and food was my hit yeah not drugs but food so I would eat and eat and you know
at one stage last year I was up to 118 kilos wow you don't know any the 93 and
a half now wow yeah I had a little cheated a little bit I got underway a
medical trial and another version of a Zempik really yeah so within two months
I've got the side of yours but the rest I've lost just because two months 20
yeah dropped big time over two kilos or we go to listen to one stationary yeah I
looked gaunt yeah they call it the Ozempic because your skin hadn't caught up yet yeah
and caught up so but the as each month went by and we each thought nothing was
they up the dose up the dose I got to the point where my skin felt like I was
sunburned all over I couldn't sleep so I had to get off it yeah so I couldn't
complete was a year trial but I couldn't complete it was just the effects on me
I spoke recently to a speaker he escaped prison and so that's part of his
speaking but he went on as empty recently yeah and his mental health
deteriorated so much he put himself into hospital and even weeks after going off
it he's still having recurring bouts of depression or depression depressive
episodes and say yeah I was you know the the research company was actually quite
good like they're always a team that looks after you so they're calling you
you go in there I think it's every fortnight I think it was get weighed
blood samples all that sort of stuff and you can call them up if you're feeling
bad or if you any symptoms so they were good and once I started a flag that this
symptom that was coming along it was actually well known in it and so yeah
they just took me off it straight away and said yeah well you look great man
yeah I feel good you know it's funny when you lose weight and all your other
health symptoms just fall into place yeah you know being at a good weight it
sort of cures everything else and so I sort of keep up with that now but the
ADHD tablets that I take five ants is also helps with binge eating so I don't
binge eat anymore because you're getting the dopamine dopamine here yeah I'm not looking for food all the
time like if I was driving in the car I'll need some chips beside me to get
me occupied while I'm driving in the car yeah things like that and but now I
don't and I just I sometimes now I've got to remind myself to eat it's just one
of those things that you go oh I haven't had lunch today I probably should eat
something yeah yeah so it's it's helped me out a long way and like the doctor
said when I was diagnosed officially and medicated at the end of January and then
February 14th my house burnt down cool no lithium fire and no it was you know
there's little portable battery banks that we yeah our banks that we use to
keep our phones charged if you're on the go yeah because we lost power from
storms yeah I was charging one of them for a generator and well no it was in my
spray trailer we got a little off-grid battery and with solar panels so I had
the inverter on and I was running a cable extension cable from the inverter
into the house keeping the fridge and the freezer going but then I had one of
those little RCD power banks GPOs and I was just charging those two power banks
to so we had something at night to keep our phones charged I went to work into
the city early my youngest daughter was at home because the school would lost
power so no school and it's just amazing you know someone must be looking above
us because my dad decided to go and pick my daughter up and go and get sushi in
Seymour so they had left and then I was just getting into the city and I've got
a phone call from a neighbor down the road saying you better get on yeah yeah
house is gone and yeah turned around drove home and I actually my legs didn't
work when I got out of the car because there was police firefighters people just
standing in your house over written in your front yard and no house left and I
got out and forgot to walk so I fell over so well never had to pick me up and
yeah and yeah it's pretty pretty tragic time but yeah I'm talking to my doctor
after that he goes imagine if you weren't on your five ants how would you
focus and concentrate and I thought no I wouldn't had a chance no I mean wow and
you know when the insurance company starts mucking around with you when at a
time when you need to be looked after and the insurance company palms you off
to a third party and they're trying to screw you out of every cent yeah I had
to be focused I had to become a master of the public disclosure yeah statement
yeah I had to read everything and in the end because of the ability to do it
actually read this stuff now they ended up to pay me extra hundred and twenty
grand because they didn't they had clauses in there for temporary
accommodation filling up tanks of water that the CFA used and filling my pool up
that the CFA used and I ended up when they were trying to stuff me around and
only give me half my insurance policy I said listen I've now read through this
you now owe me this do you want me to keep reading what do you want to pay me
out now 24 hours later so you have a new superpower yeah I don't you know and I
think that's also that stubbornness yeah if you're gonna try and screw me I'm
gonna I'm gonna fight yeah so yeah so it was it was good and talking to the
doctor after it he just said imagine if you weren't on your vipance yeah you
probably would have been a mess and I said I wouldn't have achieved what I
needed to achieve because you know day two I realized after the fire realized I
still had the same clothes on yeah and it's quite funny that Cal's friends all
brought clothes for the girls and her and my friends bought alcohol and I'm
looking at couldn't quite wear this and so I said to the old man I said we're
gonna have to go to Kmart and get some clothes so it's great being a bloke
because 100 bucks later had a wardrobe yeah and yeah so it's and I realized I
had to step up because Cal was you know she wasn't functioning properly the kids
weren't functioning properly yeah and we lost everything including two pets a cat
and I realized I just had to stand up because no one else was gonna help and
especially insurance company you should have been there at the time and yeah so
yeah into the documents bringing people and just yeah fighting it and but what
you realize to his community spirit still there yeah people that came from
no we never met them and we're bringing things around and so that was that was
quite good to see that so people can be great yeah yeah times when they find out
that you have nothing there someone rang me up we never knew and just said
listen I've got a caravan you want to use it you're in country yeah we went to
Griffith to for Michelle to do a TEDx talk yeah and the small town
hospitality was better than anywhere received anywhere around the world yeah
yeah yeah you know some people complain that everyone knows your business but
sometimes we need you to need them to know your business to help yeah so you
know it might be a bad on one side but it's also some benefits to it that's it
um John I could talk to you forever we've got 45 minutes we might
unless you show have you got another question no well I just want to know and so it's gonna get longer
is now now that you in control of how you want to be and what you're doing
yeah so you said you stepped up you felt you had to step up and you were able to
do that and because you were focused and you could just see what you needed to do
and you can organize everything do you like and you're the CEO of and founder of
your business are you see what I was not say yeah yeah Alistair's the CEO I'm
chief pilot yeah yeah cuz I have more of that flying background so they all
pay me for being the chief pilot I drew the short straw on that one yeah so well
that's a leadership role yeah it is yeah so do you do you now feel that any of
your training that you did in aviation and with the human factors as well now
being you know a hundred percent focused do you find that you can it's easy to
lead and and people follow you that's that's the definition of lead I have a
bit more confidence yeah and I think a great leader should be able to express
the bad times so people understand bad times absolutely vulnerability we're
gonna get it you know no matter what in life we're in for on average what 70 80
years we're gonna have some tough times and when you can explain to people that
are looking up at you that you're gonna experience I've experienced it here I am
that's a great way of being a leader because you know we're not bulletproof
that's what I've learned over the years now that I used to think I was bulletproof
and I can handle a lot of things but you know being a leader you need to show
that you know there are times where we need to sometimes dig down and find
something from within and all you need is just that one little event to change
your whole mindset and then you're back on track yeah and that's what I'm trying
to teach there because we got a lot of young kids flying for us now yeah so
yeah that's a great way of being a leader and showing leadership well how
about we finish this podcast with a bit of a promotion gives the name of the
company again Fieldmaster systems how do they find you it's all over the websites
they will they go to Google Fieldmaster systems and they will find us Facebook
all that sort of stuff Alastair our tech guy takes care of all that okay
Alastair update the website yeah that's awesome yeah yeah thanks for thanks for
having me on yeah yeah how's your meeting you man to easy cheese
that was fun that was fun
you're such a clown and who's gonna listen maybe I'm not thanks mom