We'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which this podcast was recorded, the Gaddigall people of the Urination. We pay our respects to Elder's past and present. Hi, welcome back to my head Game podcast. I'm a Middleton. We started head Game in September last year and I've since spoken to some incredible people. We've got a whole bunch of new listeners to Headgame and I wanted to share one of my favorite episodes, and actually the first
episode we ever dropped. Todd Russell is one top bloke and he shared his unbelievable story of surviving in the Beaconsfield Mine with me. It's nine twenty six pm on Anzac Day two thousand and six when an earthquake hits the small town of Beaconsfield in North Tasmania. It only reaches a magnitude of two point three on the Richter scale, the kind of earthquake that you probably won't even feel, but for Todd Russell it changes his life forever. As
the earthquake hits, he's working almost a kilometer underground. Fourteen miners manage to scramble to safety from the rock fall, but Todd and fellow miner Brandt's Web are trapped hundreds of meters under the surface in a cage the size of a dining table. After cutting their clothes and boots to free themselves from the rubble, they assess the situation. All they have is the small amount of water seeping through the rock overhead and one musely bar between them.
They agree to wait twenty four hours to eat it. They end up waiting four days, but it would be another ten days before they're rescued. I'm at Middleton and this is head Game today, an extraordinary insight into what it's like to be trapped nearly a kilometer underground with nothing but a mate, a musically bar, and the hope to be reunited with loved ones. Todd, it's great to have you on my podcast head Game. So take me back to the earthquake. Now. The earthquake hits a two
point three on the Richter scale. Nothing We don't even feel it on the surface. However, underground is a lot different. Talk me through that moment when that happened and when you realized you were in serious trouble.
So the night before I was working in the nine to twenty five level. It's the same level as what we got stack in on the ANXECT day. And the ground was very noisy, popping and cracking, and I actually got hit with a rock the night before, which is probably the size of a football, and it actually knocked the helmet off my head. So the next night when we come in, like I said.
I was back filling and that's just due to the stretch.
Yep and it's spitting rocks and dropping rock. So the next night, on ANAZAC day, like I said, I was doing some backfilling and Brent and Larry and arrived at around about it's about seven twenty five, seven thirty pm at night, and I remember parking my underground loader back at the cross Cup. I got out, grabbed my water bottle, and I proceeded up to where the light vehicles parked, which was halfway between where Larry and the bogger was. I placed that on the back of the vehicle as
I proceeded up to the telly. Later, Brent reached into his pocket and he pulled out a coin and he tossed the coin and he said to Larry, what do you want heads or tarts? That was the difference between Brant being in the basket with me and Larry Knight being where he was. So the toss of a coin. The toss of a coin cost Larry his life. But say Brent, just by the toss of that coint it was nine to twenty five PM is obviously the seismic event,
which registered two point three on the rector'scale. And even though you say you don't feel them vibrations, I have been informed at stage that some of the vibrations were fifteen k's away. You know, for us it was instant bang, quicker than you can blink, quicker than split second. And you know, I remember laying there and I'm in a position that nobody's body should be put in. My left leg was completely numb from my hip to the tips of my toes was numb that took six days to recover.
My left knee was punched through one hundred mile galve and I steel mesh. My entire body apart from my forearms, from my elbows down and my neck up was covered in rock. And when I say rock, some of them were as small as fifty pieces, some of as big as footballs. And it wasn't until then that I sort of started to get my bearings about myself, that I
realized what had happened. Initially, I thought there'd been a malfunction on the machine where the tires might have blown out or something like that, because of the percussion inside the basket. It's a basket that's one point for me to square, so it's only nine hundred high, and there's no roof above us. It's open, so we're open to the elements. But you know, and we've now got this
suspended of ars like a three dimensional jigsaw puzzle. We only need one piece of that rock to move, and as a fair chance that we're going to be crushed to death. But I remember laying there in the darkness, completely buried in so much pain, and I remember screaming to Larry and to Brand to get us out. You get us out, Get us out, and trying to get Brand to help me get the rock off me. And I was one of one hundred I think it was one hundred and sixteen kilo when I was working underground.
I thought maybe I was physically strong enough to heave up and push the rock off me. But each time that I did that, it compacted tighter and tighter, and I was unable to take a smart's oxygen in. The pressure was actually starting to push the contents and my stomach up. I slowly suffocating, And you know, I remember laying there in excruciating pain, and I just prayed to the big fellow. I said, you've got to take me. I said, I can't handle this anymore so, and I
remember laying there wanting it to end. And an image appeared, and that image was a picture of Caroline, myself and the three kids. Because only only a week or two weeks before Beaconsfield happening, we went and had a family portraits taken and one of the photos was our group photo. And once that image appeared, I knew I had to fight. I couldn't leave my family behind. And to see that image was the image that brought me back to fight.
And then screamed to brand even though I'm now buried at around about read about the four hour mark, worried about a crush injury.
Yeah, you've got the toxins, you've got, you've got the you've got the gravity that's against you, You've got the rocks that have on you. You've got a situation where it's pitch black, and you know how dangerous it is down there. You're thinking, I'm never getting out of the situation, and then you've got your power next year, that's unconscious. Yep, this picture comes up, but that's your reason.
Yep, that's what that's what I now fight for. So you know, brand's now come come around. We've said about removing this rock that's covering my entire body, one rock at a time. Obviously, there was no room to put it outside the basket, so the bigger rocks had to be stacked inside the basket. The smaller rocks we found places for. So now we're in a basket that's one point four meters by now seven hundred, so we've taken
half the space of the case stacked with rock. We had one guy on his background laying on his side, so each time we want to toss and turn, it was just like laying on a bit of razor blades. So after you know the concerns of a crash injury, four and a half hours later, I am now in a position where I'm pretty much totally incapacitated because my left leg's completely numb.
So when did your power come to? When did he when did he sort of come to When did you realize there must have been a relief to find out that he was actually because looking knowing that he's there and he's not responding, you're probably thinking he's dead.
The things I couldn't see because you're in darknes.
And you know he's there and he's not responding. Are you thinking in your head he's dead?
Yes, you know, I'm thinking I'm not getting a response.
To it's pitch black as well.
Because what people don't realize is when you work underground, there's a difference between dark and darkness. You're sitting in a room, you turn the lights off, bang, it's picked black dark. But over a period of thirty or forty seconds, your night light starts to come through your and you can actually see through the darkness. When you're underground, you cannot see two centimeters in front.
Now, So how do you know that he's alive? That brunt's alive?
So we're probably about I don't know, two, probably three, three and a half hours into it. So once I made contact with him, like he then yelled out to me, so he's obviously come around. He's now fearing for his life as well. So now he's yelling out to me. The next thing you know, bang right, we're on level playing field and he's We're talking to each other through the darkness, not knowing where each other were. Like we knew were within an area that we were, but I
didn't know what position he was in. He didn't know what position I was in.
Was it a relief or did it incite panic?
If Brand hadn't come through, well then and that image of mine didn't come through, It's just fortunate that we both pulled through, because there'll be nothing works and you can imagine learning a small area with a deceased body. Besides, you know, even now you're now dealing with that as well as whatever else is going on.
So that mindset flip. You see that picture, you've now got Brant on side, what do you how does the communication happen and what do you start doing to make to make things better for you?
So without using the words that we probably used underground throughout the course of the day, but it was a matter of you know, look, our main priority now is if your free brandt we need to free me. And because because of the rock and stuff that we're using, a lot of was quartz and that too, and quarts is very sharp, so you know, we've got a lot
of cuts, bruises, and lacerations throughout the course. But you know, over the over that that period of the few hours to get the rock off me and then obviously we're going to the next six stays station there where you know, there's a lot of things that we were doing, a lot of things that we're talking about just to try and keep a morell up.
So you mentioned morale in the military is everything. You know, we see, you know, humor in the face of adversity. You know, morale is ultimately, I would say one of the key survival methods of staying alive.
Yep.
Morale, whether that's hope, whether it's just humor in the face of adversity, just trying to keep morale high, because that's what's going to keep you alive, right yep. How did you keep morale to a level where there was hope?
Well, we're going to two stages there, you know, like you have morele and you had that roller coaster ride as well. So throughout the course of the next six days, we had some highs and we had a lot of loads, but morele we talked about family, and that's what got us through. You know, both Brand and I were two completely different people. We'd never worked together before in seven years. We'd started at the mine on the same day under the same mining contractor, but never ever worked together to
Anzac day two thousand and six. You know, it was interesting how everybody's got a different life story. And Brand's older than him and Rachel. They've got twins who are eighteen. At the time. I had a younger family, so I had three children. I had two boys and a girl. So I had Lam who was six at the time, Madison who was ten at the time, and my UTIs was twelve, so they were younger. You know. As part of our conversations it was about if anything happened to
him or happened to me. We had messages, specific messages. We want to take them back to our family. So once we got our bearings, one I think it was my cap lamp had been smashed in the rock fall. Brance fortunately was knocked off his head, so after Scramsy threw the rocks, we found his cap lamp, so we had lights sparingly. So knew and we knew that the battery would only last a period day twelve or fourteen hours.
Maybe you had to rush in your light. How did you food water? How did you rush in that?
So the first six days, like I said, I had my water bottle in the basket, but still to this day I have no idea where that water bottle went to. So over the six days we started collecting groundwater in one helmet, so the dripping of the water, because Beaconsfield was a very wet mind but to get a mouthful of water it took somewhere for sinner, probably two hours
just to get a mouthful of water. So we then decided, then, look, you know, we can't rely on this, so we started collecting our urine in another helmet, worst case scenario, not that we didn't do that. Luckily we didn't have to. But over the six days I said, you know, I said, we started collecting the water. We had no food apart from Musley bar Brandt was. He gave me half his mulybo, but I lost it. So I didn't eat for the
first six days. We never slept for six days because we're too frightened it And like I said, over the six days before being found alive, there was so much happening, you know, because I had a watch on and I knew that the accident happened about nine to twenty five, So every time I got to nine to twenty five, I knew it was day shift. I knew it was
night shift. And over the course of the next six days, like I said, there were so much happening as underground loaders working in the nine to twenty five level, bogging the dirt out, taking it back and put it in the stockpile, even to the extent where it started to lift the back of the machine that both Brand and I are on. You know, we've got all this rock suspended of us, like at three dimeters of jigsaw puzzle.
And unbeknownst to both Brandon and myself at this time, the body of Larry Knight had been found two days in, so they didn't give both Brand myself any chance of survival. So what we're now concerned of is now they found the back of the machine, they're going to bring in a big loader, put a big chain on it, drag it out so they could give our bodies back to
our loved ones so they could bear it. But it got those stage we could hear the underground drill rigs drilling away, and it just sounded like they were rahabilitating the area. But all of a sudden, there's dead silence, and we couldn't understand why. We could hear the machines driving off in the distance, you hear the light vehicles start up and drive off, and we knew that the day shift had come on and the night shift had
gone off. But after a period of time, like I said, there was dead silence, and we didn't know whether someone else had been hurt or something from a potential rock fall. And then you know, we're laying there in the pitch black darkness, with which if you haven't been underground, you don't know what darkness is, and all of a sudden, there's just this almighty explosion. So what we realized later thirty meters from where we were laying, they started drilling and blasting.
Did you try and communicate with them?
So we tried to make communication. You know, we had some supplies and shift during some rock it's all bashing on the steel carriage trying to notify them that, and then all of a sudden the horn horn beeped, so we thought we'd been found alive. But it wasn't. It was just to notify people that were in the area that the machine was starting up and was driving off.
In a survival situation like that, which I think is really important for the listeners, is any little glimmer of hope like that that horn blood did you just and you grubbed hold of that? Was that morale in itself?
Yep? That lead to this because you know, and then then then you get the drilling and blasting and your back, your back then here at the floor level, Yeah, you know, you're on the downer. And like I said, we're in pitchfake dark, and so we've turned the light on the Spirit because we're using it sparently, And we just looked at each other and said, what the you know what?
And I took a pen from my pocket and I started, I mean left leg, I started recording times and dates so that whatever they did on the outside killed us, that if they recovered our bodies, there was proof to prove that what they did killed us and we were alive at that particular point in time. And then on my right leg, this was probably the hardest thing that
I endured while I was underground. So I sat there and I wrote a goodbye letter or goodbye note to every individual of the family Mum, Dad, Carolyn, Trent, Madison, Leam, brothers, sister, a whole lot just on my left leg, you know, just saying look, I can't I can't even remember what I wrote. But there was a there was a little note to each of them so that you know when our bodies were recovered, and that's what we did. And that was the first six days, and it wasn't until
the Sunday afternoon. Is there was two gentlemen that came back down to the nine to twenty five level and as I said, unfortunately Larry lost his life and his body was recovered two days into the rescue, and that area then became a crime scene. So it was caughting off for investigation purposes. Processes in place, and now it's a crime scene. It had to be guarded by minds inspectors and stuff like that, so that you know, if our bodies were recovered and then they do the full investigation.
And these two gentlemen, like I said, come back down to that area and they made a remark to the mind's inspector that maybe you need to have a coffee, and he sort of twigged on what was happening, and he said to the guys, he said, look, it'll take me about fifteen minutes to have a coffee. So no sooner did that mind's inspector go out of sight. They entered the nine to twenty five level at their own risk, and that's what they did. They entered their own risk
because it was such a heavy, devastated. As I said earlier, Brandon and I were two completely different people, and apart from two things we had in common, we both married high school sweethearts, and we both knew how to see Kenny Rodgers again.
But so it sounds like Kenny Rodger's going on done now.
With But music in general is another healer and another motivator and jokes like bow yep, Brandt is a joker. And you know, throughout the course of the rescue, I had my strengths, he had his strength. So we relied on each other strengths to get us through. But that Sunday afternoon when we did each other yep pretty much. And then so that Sunday, when these two gentlemen entered the nine twenty five levels do that so called risk assessment.
We were singing the gambler. Yeah, And then I remember I remember lying lying now on our back, singing the Gambler, and it didn't sound real good, but it was morale boosting. And then all of a sudden, I just hear this noise and I said the brand shut up. He said why. I said, no, no, that shut up, shut up, shut up. Then I held out, is there anyone out there? And this voice come back? Our hearts just sunk. After six days and during all this hardness and what we did
to finally have communication to the outside world. You know, I've spoken to these two gentlemen and they told me how they both just collapsed to the ground when they heard our voices. And then after being found alized, that's when everything changed. Like the first six days felt like a twelve hour shift, it just went so fast in it. But after being founderalized, the next eight it felt like twelve months because they had to put implementations in place.
Now they've got to dot their eyes, cross the t's and do everything correctly, because now they've got two guys that are alive, buried under all this rock, and what they could have done could have us. Then now I got put implementation in place on how they're going to extract us from where we are and bring us home safely.
So you get this hope we've been found, we'll be out of even a couple of hours and you're still under there for eight days.
You know, you can imagine for both Brand and myself the emotions now that we've been found alive. You know, here we are thinking the next time they press this button, they're going to kill us. And they had it was drilled, it was ready to charge and blast, but they found us beforehand.
Because of Two's world as it went against protocol.
Yep, and went into the nine to twenty five level to do that so called risk assessment for one last chance before they press that button again. It wasn't charged, but they were going to charge it and they're going to blast. So then once these two gentlemen left the nine to twenty five level, they went out and informed the Mind's rescue person who were there on site, the miners, the Mind inspector. They've gone them from underground to the office and next thing you know, mate, it's just gone
wolf like wild fire. It's gone throughout the countries, throughout the world, everywhere that these boys have been now found alive. So for the guys that are looking after the rescue, the pressures now gone from here to here. So they had a control room up on the surface and I think they had somewhere around I think twenty five individuals in that control room and trying to come up with scenarios on how they're going to extract us from where
we were. But what they did to start off with is they brought an underground lader like the one I said a bit the horn earlier, So the same loader they brought in and put a communication system in where they could ask ask a series of questions, and they also had another transmitter set up so when we yelled back, it was being transmitted back to a guy writing all the answers to the questions down and some of the questions were how high off the ground was the basket?
How far was the boom extended? So that's all that's all now recorded. They then take that back to the surface, back to that control room, then put in a plan or roughly right, I think the boys this is where they are from what they're telling us, this is where we believe they are. So where they started drilling to us was pretty much in the right vicinity. When they broke through. They're so precise that that drill still spinning
like that. We both turned and looked out the little cavity behind us, and here we just sitting there spinning their like that, looking at us, spurting water at us. So that then became our link line to the outside world. So now we're starting to get water. Now we're starting to get food. They've sent a camera through that's now set up to a tuva and video recorder recording all our movements. Twenty four to seven, we had a telephone sent through in a plastic bag in pieces with a
diagram and a screwdriver. Over the next eight days there was so much hat opened, and you know, they had experts in from all different fields. You know, I don't beknownst to both Brandon myself. Three hundred meters directly above us at the six thirty level, they had guys using explosives and using all different types of explosives so that if any stages in the final stages of the rescue, they had to use them, they had all the information.
They had the vibrations monitored and recorded, so that you know, they knew what exploses is to use. So that was all happening. Everything that were received came in a Mount Franklin water bottle which was six hundred mili strapped to probably four lengths of electrical conjuct. It's fed up and down like a pull through on a rifle. Now I've got a telephone. One of the things I wanted to do, but they wouldn't allow it. I wanted to ring home because they had they had, you know, the ways of
doing it. But what they're worried about is because of the media contingency, and that is tapping lines, trying to get information, to get a story, and all that sort of thing. So what they started to do. Every day, you know, about three or four o'clock, someone had come down up the huot in Mount Franklin water bottle. You'd open it up, there be your mail. There'd be letters written from home. There was letters that we were writing writing back, and each time that we were writing to
our family or anything that was coming in. It was all being monitored by a psychologist because the last thing I want to do seend things through that we're going to upsetting it. But one of the things that I asked for from Carolyn I mentioned to you earlier when I closed my eyes and that image appeared. One of the things that I asked from her was that photo. And it was only a small photo, about two inches square, but the psychologists wouldn't allow me to have it because
they believed it was upsetting. To me.
That's what kept you alive, That's what that was, the image that gave you. That why that reason to still fight, to still be alive.
Every couple of days we got fresh clothing. Yeah, so this day, I remember, I got a pair of flat lined track pants I made of mine Dean mackerel, who still is a very good friend of mine. He was one of the mine's rescue guys that was in charge of talking to us because if I wasn't talking, brand had to be, so one of us had to be talking at all times. And the phone rang and I picked it up, and it's Mac and he said, hey,
big fellow. He said, just check your trousers pocket. So once I got into the into the track pants and was comfortable again, I put my hand in my pocket and yeah, that that photo was in the pocket of my track pants. And I took that photo and I sat it on the rock. You know, three hundred mil from my face. And when I got down, I looked at that photo and yeah, I thought, that's that's the reason I'm fighting, that's the reason why I need to
go home. And you know, I lost a lot of tears over that, that particular fado, and throughout the course of the fourteen days, I shed a lot of tears. And for people that know me, I don't I don't cry, I don't show emotions.
Ultimately, your emotions saved your life and Brandt's.
Life pretty much. And yeah, it's powerful now, yeah, exactly right. And the way I said it, and this, unless you're put in a position where you have to survive, you don't know what your mindset and your body is capable of doing.
Exactly. I always say that to people when you're left with one option in life, you'll be absolutely surprised of what you're capable of, of what the human mind's capable of, the body is capable of, and ultimately the soul, your emotions, ye ca the emotional the emotional connection that you have. And then you realize, actually, this is what got me through is phenomenal, right, it kept your life without a shadow of a doubt. But the rescue mission. You know,
and I think people oversee this. This is such an important point that I'm going to raise here the communication between yourself and the rescue party, because they're using explosives over your head, any wrong passages of information or you're not being switched on and you're not being psychologically and physically aware of your surroundings. You've got that long and they could have done an explosion, they could have drilled in the wrong place, they could have done How how
psychologically draining was that? And did you share the load?
It had to be draining. And the thing is that it wasn't just a single decision, because there was two of us. We discussed everything. What we couldn't understand is in the final final stages of that rescue that we could hear the rock shattering in the tunnel. Yeah, that one mode of last some two minutes passes in soligram. We shouldn't be able to hear that. But they're so precise were they're drilling and they're surveying and they're blasting.
And I remember looking outside the basket. I looked down, I said this hole and Dan block, I can say, kaplan.
Wow. So that's the first time that you've seen movement outside of where you've been yep, first time.
Wow. So now, over the next five to thirty minutes, that hole has now become big enough for both Brandt and I to be extracted from inside the basket. So here we are for fourteen days on a whole big enough. And you know, obviously Pat Ball, who was the underground my manager at the time, he come back down and he crawled on his hands and he's fifteen meters up the tunnel and stood up inside the whole looking into where both Brent nowhere, and he turned around and said, Okay, Brent,
we've got the green light. You're going to come out first. But what I can tell you, Aunt, is the next seven or eight minutes that I spent inside that basket alone, after Brand's had been taken, He's gone to freedom, he's gone home to his family. I'm now inside this entoment alone, and if it goes pear shape, now I don't get to go home to my family. But it was probably the longest seven or eight minutes out of the entire three hundred and twenty one.
Hours, one hundred and twenty one hours, yep.
Three hundred and twenty one. There is what we've spent undergrad fourteen ducks.
And those seven eight minutes. And how did you move? Because you were in pain when you did you just like that at this stage, just mustle up the strength to drag myself out? How did they? Was it literally a hole and you did it to drag yourself through it?
Pretty much? It was a whole big enough. I then swung around and dropped my legs outside the basket and then dropped down a meter a to a stretcher that was waiting. I then turned around. I looked back inside the basket, looking straight back into it. In one corner, there's a plastic bag with every letter that have been written to me in there. I reached up and I took that fight out of myself, Carolyn and the kids,
put it in my pocket. I then grabbed the letters and everything in that plastic bag, put them on my chest, laid in a stretcher, and I'll scroll dragged fifteen meters to paramedics, mind's rescue personnel, where we hugged and we cried, and we talked and jeered, and just just the elation of now knowing that I'm going home.
Take me back to that feeling, take me back. What was going through your head? What was running through what's the first thing that obviously you've got a photo in your pocket, your letters, and you're just like, take me home.
Yeah. The thing is I just wanted to get back, you know, for me. You know, my family are very very close knit, and you know the thing is, I'll never understand what they went through, and they'll never understand what I went through. I talked earlier about the emotional roller coaster. Yeah, you know, they kept SCIENTI us, we're going to have you out in forty eight hours. So every for eight days, forty eight hours, we got this forty eight hours, we're going to have you out. We're
going to have you out. We have you. But now we have now come out. We know that we are safe. We know there's nothing that can hurt us. We weren't aware of our injuries, but there was conversations between us and paramedics where they didn't want us walking. But the way Brent and I looked at it, an that day two thousand and six, we walked into the mind. Fourteen days later, the ninth of May two thousand and six, we're going to walk out of there with or without them.
So when that cage reached the surface at five point fifty nine am on the ninth of May two thousand and six, we walked out of there with our arms in the air. We walked out of there on pure adrenaline, only for that cage to come up, and as it broke from this from below the surface to finally come up, you know, you're getting glimpses as it's come up because of the mess in the cage, and to look straight across and there's my family sitting and standing there waiting
for me to come out. And it was just pure elation, you know. And yeah you've I don't really seen the footage. But we come out front ground Australia and take our tag off the board and people say, why what would you just run straight to your love. Well, every time we come out from underground, you removed your tag. You know. It was to let people know that we're home.
Our job is done, we're alive, we're here.
So when we went underground, there were sevent een men win underground, there were seventeen names on the tag board on the inside. When the rock fall happened, fourteen men exited the mine all bar three tags. One was Todd Russell, one was Brent Webb, the other one was Larry Knight. That were the three missing miners. So when we come out from underground, it was to tell everybody, Hey, we're out, we're home.
We started this job and we're now finished it.
So then I turned and I went straight put the arms around Carolyn and just just that feeling I'm honestly going to sit here and I can't explain it.
Yeah, and that one tag that was left Larry. You say, seventeen went down and he sixteen went home.
And that's that's one of the hardest things that. Yeah, it's a bit of pilled swalle because it should never have happened.
How you survive that? I will never know to talk about having the strongest head game when it comes to controlling your emotions through coust and phobia of being in a situation like that, you know, psychologically being switched on, because any one wrong move would have killed you. It doesn't matter if they if you've established the communications. It's like everything has to be to the point, everything has to be pin pointed accuracy in order to keep us alive.
To back and forth morale I talk about morale all the time, how important it is, and you mentioned it as well, the you know, humor in the face of adversity, singing along and you know, just finding the humor aside to life when everything is against you is it's a phenomenal trait to have, and you don't realize you have it until you're put in that situation. The family, how's family life? How did they react to it? And I can imagine family life is now as precious as anything.
Yeah, look, you know my family are well. Unfortunately this through you know, the illness of PTSD and depression and stuff like that, is I became a person that I probably shouldn't have done. But unfortunately, it's an illness and it's something that you know, we can't control, and you know, it's sort of tarnished my relationship with my children in
the early years. And you know, I'm still still trying to build that relationship back with my children and the father to them where I wasn't, you know, because of it through the PTSD. It also costomer of a marriage, so Caroly and I separated, but you know, she's moved on there, she's she's very happy and where she hears and.
You know, Todd, are you happy?
Yeah, look, I am, I'm, I'm, I'm I'm looking for happiness, which you know, it's it's out there. But I've also got to look after myself in a way where I've got to get myself right to And you know, I went down a road probably eight months ago where I was in a real good, real good space and I didn't want to be here and I went to do something silly. But fortunately, because of what I've been through,
I understand how important life is. I'm probably now in the best best space I've been in police so many years.
Good. Well, what you've got to realize as well, is the story that you have, you know, will inspire someone. If you inspire one person, if you give someone one little glimmer of hope from what you've been through for the mindset that you had to adapt in order to get yourself out of that situation, you know, then you're giving back. You're doing something as a purpose for you.
And that's exactly what I've said to people. And you know, I look, I look back on Baconsfield and I look at the circumstances and a hundred recently, I shouldn't be here, but you are. I am, and you know, as I said, the people, I don't understand why. But if I and as you just said, then if I can help one person and save someone's life, I've done a job that by helping somebody else. And if that's what it is, well I'm pretty sure that I've helped a lot of people along.
The way exactly. And also what the coping mechanisms that you used to get through Everyone's going through struggle. Everyone's got a story. Everyone's going through these hard times. And you say about you know, you don't understand why you're still here. There's some things that you don't need to understand. We mentioned that before that you can never understand. But the why behind it, you'll hear why you still here? Well, listen, if you can save one life, then you're doing your job.
That's that's the why, that's the purpose, that's that's that's that's understandably why you are still here.
And you know, I am, I'm very passionate and I I tell I tell a story with great passion. You know, if I just have an opportunity to help someone, and that's that's what I'm here for.
This podcast will certainly help many of that. I'm sure mate. Between us, we've got this. It's been amazing talking to you, Todd. You're an amazing individual. Keep being you, don't ask too many questions, just know the why, keep doing what you're doing and listen. Ultimately, you and Brent helped each other save your lives. Now as the roles are reverse. Now, I'm sure that you're going to be saving lives, especially with the motivational talking that you're doing and the stories that you have.
Thanks for coming on, mate, mctually appreciated. Thank you.
If you'd like to read more about Todd Russell's harrowing experience, you can read Bad Ground inside the beacons Field Mind Rescue by Tony Wright, Todd Russell and Brandt's Web. Thanks so much for joining me on head Game. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss any of our incredible stories and leave me a review wherever you're listening. I'm at Middleton. Catch you again next time