The RegenNarration Podcast
The RegenNarration podcast features the stories of a generation that is changing the story, enabling the regeneration of life on this planet. It’s ad-free, freely available and entirely listener-supported. You'll hear from high profile and grass-roots leaders from around Australia and the world, on how they're changing the stories we live by, and the systems we create in their mold. Along with often very personal tales of how they themselves are changing, in the places they call home. With award-winning host, Anthony James.
The RegenNarration Podcast
Life, Death, and Other Miracles: With ‘The King’ David Marsh
This part of my conversation with regenerative agriculture legend, David Marsh, has stayed close since we recorded it at his place back in March 2024. In fact, when I first thought about launching the new series Vignettes from the Source, this passage was front of mind.
Welcome to the 5th Vignette in the series that features some of the unforgettable, transformative and often inexplicable moments my guests have shared over the years.
This ten minutes or so is full of such moments, moments that power David’s enormous legacy. It is part of what was, fittingly, the podcast’s bicentennial episode. And that happened to be recorded days after another prominent guest, gun writer and newish farmer Sam Vincent, said this about an experience of seeing David speak: ‘it was like the king had entered the room’.
Then after the episode with David was released, I was humbled to see a listener had written this review: ‘I’ve listened to thousands of hours of podcasts and never commented. I feel compelled to say this was simply beautiful.’
The land was singing too.
If you’d like to hear or revisit this conversation in full, head to episode 200 – ‘The Land Does It For You’ (with a few photos on that web page too).
Originally recorded 10 March 2024.
Title slide: David & AJ ahead of this conversation (pic: Olivia Cheng).
See more photos on the original episode web page linked above, and for more behind the scenes, become a supporting listener via the links below.
Music:
Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.
The RegenNarration playlist, music chosen by guests.
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And I mean my father used to talk to people at the drop of a hat, whether he knew them or not. My kids are a bit embarrassed about the way Mary and I do that, I think. But you have these amazing conversations.
AJ:Well, speaking of which I joked about the title of your upcoming book.
David:Yeah, but you've got one. Yeah. Well, I didn't actually tell you what that was all about, that thing, but when Matthew died, which was on the eve of Anzac Day in 2007, he was 21,. He had a friend in town who they used to try and outright each other. They'd do some writing about any topic they liked. It was on a blog. I didn't even know what a blog was then, but you became an expert. I found out about it later. But anyway, sean and Matthew were sort of like a literary dueling banjo.
AJ:Not a bad way to do it, yeah.
David:And anyway, sean went looking on the internet to see whether Matthew had written anything about his life and he came across this bit of writing called Life, death and Other Miracles, and it was about him talking about how he became reconciled to his own mortality Really and he was only probably 16 then, I think and part of it was about when he was in hospital, when he had the brain abscess and that he was scared of dying young. But then he realised that he became reconciled to that. But he told the story about how he was in the children's hospital and he had to go for a CAT scan, which often happened, and he had to have nothing to eat for a certain amount of time and he'd organised for these nurses to bring him a Vegemite sandwich at five o'clock in the morning and they didn't turn up and he got a bit stroppy about it. And then he found out a couple of days later that the reason they hadn't delivered was that the Chinese boy in the room next to him had died. And he said I've never felt the disgust I felt with myself for feeling for what I'd said to these wonderful girls.
David:Anyway. So this went on and he talked about various aspects that had happened in his life when he had thought about death and his own. But he said this is one thing he said I think I can repeat it. He said I'm not aware of having a particularly sad or unhappy life. He said I think that has fallen more on my parents. You know, we got that on the eve of his funeral and it was just so comforting in a way to know that he'd, because we'd always. It's a real dilemma for people that have got a child that's critically unwell. You know how much do you tell them? Because I mean, we didn't not tell him. We told him what was physically happening with his heart and how it was different, but we didn't get into how long he was going to live, because nobody knows the answer to that one. But I think if you, you can probably say too much and it just might dash their hopes.
AJ:Yeah, yeah.
David:I mean I'm not advising others not to do what they think is right.
David:I mean we always did what we thought was right, guided by Mary's instinct, and like, for example, when he had the brain abscess, we rushed him we were on holidays when that happened and we rushed him up to Lismore Hospital to have this CAT scan and he had the scan and then, you know, the paediatrician called us in and he said I think your son's got a very aggressive tumor and he's only got a few days to live, crikey, really, yeah, that absolutely hit us like a ton of bricks. But then we both felt that if that was the case, he should know about it, because he might want to say something to us or who knows what. Whether or not that was the right thing to do, I don't know, but we and Alice, his sister, were on his bed in this emergency room with a curtain around us, and we told him and he did exactly what any of us would do. He howled and wailed and carried on like we all would and in about a minute he was accompanying us, you know.
AJ:Extraordinary In that way, david, his legacy his legacy seems to be powering yours, yeah strength, absolutely.
David:But getting back to this proto-book that you've mentioned, Nudging it along.
David:One of the things that I've said in it in regard to Matthew is that you know when he died, you know that's a whole other deal. You know, grieving for a child, that's what nobody wants, but no one can take it away from you. You have to confront it and you know we were falling apart. There's no question about it. We thought we were alright, but no, we could hardly get out of bed and the people in Booroo have fed us for months. So you know that was a wonderful thing. But you can't expect anyone to understand what that feels like. We had known all his life that he probably wasn't going to live a long life, but knowing that made absolutely no difference at the time of his death. No, that's right. It just completely floors you. My heart was aching. I thought I was having a heart attack, but it was just. I was aching for him, but yeah, so I was writing about that in this chapter, about Matthew, the end of Matthew's life and then after it.
David:And you know, a lot of the time when you're grieving and a lot of people, I think, feel this. Everyone wants to say something profound and wonderful to you or let you know that they're thinking of you, which is so wonderful and uplifting, but at that moment you're in this numbed state because your body produces all these adrenaline-like substances that put you into this numbed state. So you can actually get through it and you do find yourself comforting those who are trying to comfort you a lot. That is just, I think, so common. But I drew a parallel with you know, over time I used to hate it when people would say, oh, time will heal.
David:I really didn't like that, you know, because the thing that we found most painful was this slow ebb of time that took you further away from the last time you held him in your arms. You know that was so painful. But you know it is actually right to say that over time the tsunamis that are coming at you early days close together and high, gradually become further apart and lower, and then you learn to. You don't get over it at all, but you do learn to cope with another reality. But some people that you hoped would do something for you were unable to and it wasn't. I very quickly came to the view that it wasn't a strike against them at all, because I reviewed my own performance when people had had tragedies and I'd write them a letter and say things and I'd think God, that really wouldn't have been that helpful. But you know, we all do the best we can. Well, that's an important tenet there.
David:So what I was getting to, though, was that, over time, we began to heal. The landscape was starting to heal as well, and it was sort of a parallel thing that the healing landscape helped us heal. You know, that was just so important.
AJ:Do you feel like recalling on that, that note in a sense, what you told us at the top of the hill?
David:What was that?
AJ:I've forgotten. A couple of miracles, no less. Oh yeah, that seemed to I don't know.
David:Sing out from this land, yeah, yeah, no, that was extraordinary, yeah about. Like you know, I was so shocked at Matthew's death. We were both with him when he died and it took seconds for him to die and I was so shocked that I had to look at a photograph of him to remember what he looked like for a few days. That was just so. I felt so guilty about that. Anyway, that passed quite quickly but anyway, a month or so, maybe six weeks, after he died, there was a little mulberry tree on the end of the place down towards Boorooa, and we all loved mulberries and Matthew loved it. We used to go down there and pick them and get mulberry juice all over us and make mulberry pies and those sort of things.
David:Anyway, I was down there, I was about to move cattle into this paddock where this little tree was and I was walking along a fence. It was a very frosty morning in May and it was a big white frost and I was walking towards this little tree which had all its leaves on, but they were all white with frost and I actually you'll probably think I'm nuts, but I actually saw this happen I was walking towards this tree and when I was about 20 metres from it, all the leaves just slowly fell to the ground. It was quite bizarre, but it made me feel like he was around it wasn't the only one.
AJ:Yeah, it wasn't the only thing that happened. No and the other time you weren't by yourself.
David:That's right. Yeah, we were coming back from Yonge one night and it was just before his funeral and we'd been to see him before his funeral. And we were coming back, mary and I, from Yonge and there's a little bit of a rise on the way back towards Booroo and you can, at a certain point, you can see Allendale, and it was late dusk, nearly dark, clear sky, and as we came over this rise where you could see the farm, the light, it was as though someone turned a flashlight on the whole landscape, lit up like pure daylight for a split second. I said to Mary did you see that? Yeah, she said what was it? We don't know what it was, but it was real.
AJ:And you both saw it.
David:Unbelievable, yeah. And look, I don't think you're necessarily going to have those things happen all the time. But you know, I can't explain why those things happened or how, and I don't care, because they were real and they were helpful.
David:The other one that I didn't mention then was at his funeral. We had a song for Guy playing as he was being carried out of the church, which was a bit of music we all loved. And years later maybe only three years ago, so that's 14 years after he died I was in Boorooa. It was the day of his the only three years ago, so it's 14 years after he died. I was in Boorooa. It was the day of his. The anniversary of his death, 24th of April was the date, and I was in town. I was thinking about him. I was driving around the roundabout just before I turned out to come home and I pressed the button on the radio in my car and Song for Guy started on the first note when I hit that button. Then it played all the way until I drove into the driver's home and then it finished. I mean, how did that happen? It was just unbelievable.
AJ:What can you say?
David:I have to say I was weeping as I drove into the driver's home. Oh, dear me.
AJ:I love the thread from your was it your grandparents? No, your parents falling in love with the music, oh yeah. And then the thread through some other instance of music you mentioned and now there's. I love that too, but that is something, isn't it? And I think most people listening when you hear this quite often that sort of chance on the radio thing, don't you?
David:Well, when you hear this quite often, that sort of chance on the radio thing, don't you? Yeah, well, my son in America, he couldn't come back for Matthew's funeral and I was talking to him and he, you know, he was absolutely shocked, of course, and he was pulled up under a big conifer up in the mountains in Aspen and he said there's very few birds around here because it's a cold desert, that climate, you know. There's very few resources because of the cold. And he said he looked up when I was telling him what had happened and he said there's this bald eagle in the top branch of this tree just sitting there. And he said, as I finished the conversation, he saw it away. So he had a little moment that he wondered how it happened as well.
AJ:Thank, you, thank you.
