July 14, 2024 • 23 mins
Warning: This article discusses suicidal ideation.
One of New Zealand’s most experienced journalists has opened up on his brush with death – and how a subsequent battle with depression has enabled him to become a “wounded healer” for those in need.
Rob Harley, whose storied 50-year career has seen him work in current affairs for TVNZ, in radio, as a church pastor and a documentary maker, has earned a reputation as a talented storyteller.
But in an interview with Newstalk ZB’s Real Life with John Cowan on Sunday night, now-70-year-old Harley recounted how he very nearly lost it all – his career, finances, mental health and life – after his liver failed eight and a half years ago.
“I was wheeled into an operating theatre at Auckland City Hospital, where I was lucky enough to have one of the best liver transplant surgeons in the world work on me,” he told Real Life.
“He pulled my old diseased liver out and gave me a new one. Afterwards he said, ‘Rob, you had two weeks to live, we got you just in time’.”
While grateful to escape alive, after the liver transplant things “really cascaded downwards”, says Harley.
“I had a very successful documentary-making business. It went well, but I’d had bad advice on tax and ended up with a horrendous tax bill, and then I had a documentary series which was incredibly successful on TV, but absolutely stripped me bare financially.
“We went bankrupt. We walked away from a beautiful little farm in west Auckland, and we were basically gipsies for the next eight years.”
Harley’s varied work over the years has seen him travel the world, and in 2001 he claimed an international journalism award for his story on TVNZ’s Assignment about a west Auckland firefighter turned arsonist.
But he admits the reporting he’s done – much of it traumatic in nature, or from war zones – has taken a mental toll.
“In Cambodia, we were at a water festival and we just got out in time before 400 people were trampled to death in a stampede,” he recalled.
“The next morning, almost robot-like, we went into the grounds of a hospital and filmed the bodies of 50 to 60 dead teenagers with toe tags on, with people trying to identify them.
“That stuff never came back and bit me on the bum until years later. In fact, it did at the end of last year, along with so much other stuff I've seen. It gets into your head and at some point the payment falls due.”
Recent years have also brought bouts of severe depression, Harley revealed. He said it seems to be common among transplant patients.
“Something happens to your head, and I lost it… I was in the black dog for about four years, I was incommunicado. I look back at my Facebook Messenger from 2017, 2018, and I had just shut down,” he said.
But he pulled himself back through a combination of “good care, good drugs and good mates”.
“I had a bloke who would call me every second day and say, ‘Zero to ten, how are you doing?’ He knew I was suicidal and sometimes I'd say ‘minus-15’. He said, ‘Okay, bro, let's get you up to two tomorrow’.
“It saved my life. You've got to have good people around you.”
That experience, of dealing with the worst of depression and emerging out the other side, has earned him a reputation as something of a de facto suicide counsellor.
Harley says while some people think it sounds ghoulish and tough, he’s grateful for it. He says wounded people often make “the best healers”.
“Every week I am next to people who are on the edge. People say, ‘Boy, that sounds ghoulish, that sounds tough’, but I love it because you actually teach people the art of something as simple as gratitude,” Harley said.
“I was talking to someone the other day who doesn't want to live. I said, ‘Get in the shower in the morning and tell yourself three things that you are proud of yourself for having done’. And it's starting
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk SEDB. Follow
this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio,
Real Conversation, Real Connection. It's Real Life with John Cowen
on News Talk z EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Good day, Welcome to real life. I'm John Cown and
I've done this many times, sitting down and having a
good chat with my very good friend and broadcaster and
author Rob Harley. It's usually just other people in the
cafe listening and Rob, but tonight there might be a
few thousand listening in as well. And it's always good
because I don't know anyone who's done as many interesting
(00:53):
things as as you, and someone who has reflected as
deeply upon them. So it's great having you on the show. Rob.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
What an absolute pleasure to see you again, my friend.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
All right, So many of the people listening may remember
you as the fresh faced report and journalist tripping around
the planet making gritty TV journalists on television. They might
be shocked to learn that you're now seventy. Were you shocked?
Speaker 3 (01:19):
I wrote a series of articles on Facebook called Sobering
Thoughts on turning seventy, and I talked about everything from
the decay in my teeth, to my regard for my
father who wouldn't let me get him on the internet,
right through to the things that I was grateful for
as I look out at my lovely view now over
the Kuipra Harbor.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Right, so you've ended up sort of saying, oh, well,
it's seventy, but it's not too bad.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
I don't know what seventy is. They say it's the
new sixty, but it feels pretty darn good. You know,
you'd remember when you're about eighteen, forty seems ancient. Seventy
is slightly scary. I mean, you realize someone used the
phrase the last third, the third third of your life.
I'm well into the third third. My allotted span is up,
(02:06):
and how many years I've got to go who knows.
But it's good to feel that you can make the
most of them and that people are still interested in
what you have to say.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
And it's a time, I guess, for doing sensible, mature
growing up things like going on a ride on a
biking gang of a bunch of Harley's. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
I had an old mate called Dazz and he called
me up last year and said, we'd like you to
be the honorary rider on a tour of the South Island,
and I couldn't resist. He used to be in a
church I used to pastor. He was there when he
was eight years old, and he went to prison a
few times, and he ranked me up in Wellington years
ago and said, hey, I've reformed.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
I'm now.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
I think he was almost a millionaire at that stage.
And he said, come with us with a bunch of
bikes called the Redeemed. We're going to go through the
South Island and raise some money for a good cause.
And I thought, look, that's the most fun you can
have with all your clothes on. So I went to
christ Church. Hadn't been on a bike for a number
of years, shakerly yet, but we got back on a
beautiful Harvey Softail heritage and off I went.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
All right. Now, those guys also were telling lots of stories,
and they had stories to tell. Offened have changed lives absolutely.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
I mean, these are guys who've all got a past.
And I heard them speak in little community groups and
open air campaigns and churches up and down the country.
I mean. One woman that absolutely blew me away was
a little lady called Anna, and she talked about you know,
having seen her son hanging from a tree. You know,
(03:32):
he was a deeply depressed young man. She went and
she thought he was dead. She cut him down. She
got on her knees and she said, to God, give
him back to me, and I'll see if I can
make something of his life. Well, she's, you know, joyfully
telling me about this at some barbecue and in Vicicago
we'd gone down to the Monroe Classic, and she said,
guess what, he's thirty four now, and he's about to
have his first child. And stories like that just came
(03:57):
tumbling out. These were guys that got on the stage,
jump and down the country with incredible confidence. Gentlest guys
she could meet, big leather clad boys and girls.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
I saw the pictures. They didn't look like gentle but
they looked like a bunch.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Of they look they look slightly scary, but they were
gentle giants.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yeah, and then amongst them is this seventy year old
Parker having the time of his life.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Well, I learned all sorts of things. I learned that.
I mean, every day I've got a hug a hony auricus.
And that felt pretty done good. I thought, I'm going
to do this again, but a great entree into your
eighth decade.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Now, these guys their lives were changed around by Christianity.
You've been a Christian since your teens, and it's not
unusual as decades go by for the some of the
crisp bages to get worn off in a person's Christian faith,
and they can be a bit cynical, bit crusty. Did
something like this sort of change your own attitudes and
(04:52):
ideas about spiritual life.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
I've always been lucky in that the contact I've had
through both my journalism and my years. I've spent fifteen
years as a pastor of a church, I've had the
privilege of getting to know real people. When I did
a TV series the late nineties called Extreme Close Up TV,
and Z indulged me and said, yeah, you can do
a series about faith.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Actually they went to three series.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
It did and it got up approximately without Scotty and
got with all the repeats, got about four million views.
And when I pitched this through, I said, we're not
going to go inside churches. We're going to go on
street level and see people whose faith changes things. And
in doing that, you know, I'd sometimes come back to
(05:35):
the office with the videotape in my hand from an
interview we've done, and I talked to my co producer
and said, this is this is just gold, It's real gold.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
And so that's so you've always been exposed, I guess
to the idea that people's lives can be turned around.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, warts and all. And that's the thing
about it. You know. I grew up in a fairly
fundamentalist church to begin with, where I sort of gained
the idea you had to be perfect. But the more
I went on, I realized that people are frail, and
if you have a concept of God, God's actually okay
with that. You know. I was in a prison in
Canada with the former Great New Zealand a rockstar, Bunny Walters,
(06:14):
and Bundy was heavily into drugs and booze, and he'd
transformed so radically. He was going into Canadian prisons and
he was turning around the lives of rapists and murderers.
I was sitting there filming this and I asked him
at a critical point. I was down on Fort Street
with him in Auckland City and I said, dude, be
honest with me, have you beaten the drugs? And the
booze totally yet, and he said, nah, I'm still working
(06:37):
on it. And I thought, isn't that amazing that that
guy's still being used and effective around the world while
he's still on the journey.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
What do they call that, wounded soldiers or something? There's
a phrase for it. I guess. Wow, there was a
great wounded healers. Yeah, there was a.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Great song back in the seventies, you know, back in
the early Jesus People era, guy called Chuck Gerard and
he wrote a song called Don't shoot the wounded. Don't
shoot the wounded. They need us more than ever. And
that's what I found, that wounded people are sometimes the
best healers.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Or you had a fairly deep word yourself, I mean
inflicted by surgeons a few years ago, I guess it'd
be eight years ago.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Now, eight and a half years ago. I was wheeled
into an operating theater at Auckland City Hospital on the
seventh floor, where one of the best liver transplant surgeons
in the world I was lucky enough to have, went
to work on me, pulled my old diseased liver out
and gave me a new one. Afterwards, you said, Rob,
you had two weeks to live, and we got you
just in time. Yeah, man, was I grateful never found
(07:36):
who the donor was, but you'd know yourself from your
own life experience. What the value of someone having that
word donor on their driver's license is it is.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
I'd encourage everyone not only just to put it on
your license, but to talk to your family too to
We just need more and more donors. There's people that
need them. My wife's life's been my wife's livee's being
saved and changed by a lung transplant, and absolutely those
donors that are so vital. But I remember seeing you
not long before that, and I've seen dead people looking
healthier than you were looking at the time.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
You told me I looked like Homer Simpson. You also
accused me of swearing at you, of which I have
no recollection. I had a condition caught out in carefully,
which is where you live, a sinzemonia to your brain,
and you're absolutely out of your mind.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Oh god, I'd hardly agree with that diagnosis that you are.
You were lively, shall we say that? Yeah? No, that
was a very very dramatic time. Were planning such a
wonderful funeral for you. Rober and we never got around
to having it. You've had this extension and now I'm
just wondering reflecting on that. And you were talking before
(08:39):
about people's lives changing and things like that. Has it
changed your perspective on things at all? Oh?
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Of course, I mean at a slightly humorous level. I
think I must have got the liver. I would love
to have met the family of the person who gave
me that liver. It must have been a young fit buck.
Because my hair started going My hair started going black again.
It was totally gray. And my sister in law pointed
out to me on my brother's sixtieth birthday, Hey, bro,
(09:04):
your hair's gone black again. But no, look, I've had
unbounded in induce since then. And modern modern medicine isn't
just a flaming miracle. You know. I'm on a pillar
in the morning and a pillot night, a little drug
called tacrolamus. It's an anti rejection drug, and you know
it's a present and I'm as right as rain.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Yeah, that's fantastic, And may you continue to do that
and then look forward to interviewing you just after your
eightieth Perhaps can we put that in the Sam, can
you just put that in the pull up diary if
I'm spared? Yeah. Now, I'm glad your body made it
through all that trauma. But you've been subjecting your mind
to a fair bit of trauma over many years, hauling
(09:44):
yourself off to places like Kosovo and Cambodia and Africa
and wherever there's strife and misery and everything like that.
There's Rob Harley with a camera. For decades, you were
doing that type of stuff and that's got to take
a toll. It did.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
In fact, Christmas last year, I had a bit of
a meltdown. I clocked up fifty years is what I
call a scribbler, a journalist, and most of it on
the end of a television camera in front of a
TV camera. And I got together with some mates and
we'd been to war zones and we started reflecting on
you know, places we've been where you know, I remember Cambodia.
(10:21):
We were at a water festival filming a couple of
women working for an aid organization. We just got out
in time before four hundred people were trampled to death
in a stampede. We got out the next morning. A
guy called Scotti McKinnon and I we both had cameras
an almost robot like we went into the grounds of
a hospital and we just filmed were the bodies of
fifty to sixty dead teenagers with toe tags on, with
(10:43):
people trying to identify them. That stuff never came back
and bit me on the bum till years later. In fact,
it did at the end of last year, along with
so much other stuff I've seen. It gets into your
head and at some point the payment falls due.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
It really does. Hey, I'd like to talk to you
more about what actually helps you get over that. How
do you build resilience back into yourself? How do you
And you've been with people going through really really tough
times and you've seen them bounce back. You've bounced back
yourself to a large extent. I would to find out
a few tips about what works for you. We'll do
that after the ad break. I'm talking with Rob Harley,
(11:18):
journalist and author. He's working on a seventh book. Now
I'm going to talk to him about that and more
about what he's done and what he's doing. This is
real life on News Talks EDB.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Intelligent interviews with interesting people. It's real life on News
Talks EDB.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Welcome back to real life. My guest's eyes are glazing
over with passion. Rob Harley is my guest tonight. And
you think some Pink Floyd there.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Yeah, coming back to life. I talked before about having surgery,
you know, and I had my headphones on as I
was being wheeled into surgery on fourth of January twenty sixteen,
and I wanted a song to inspire me. And I'd
been a Pink Floyd and not for years. In fact,
I'm making a documentary at the moment on a band
called The Pink Floyd Experience. I've been following them around
New Zealand for a year. We did a twelve camera
(12:22):
shoot with them at a constant recently blows my best
tribute band on the planet.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Anyway.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
That's just a very quick plug. But coming back to life.
There's a line in it which is I took a
heavenly ride through our silence. I knew the moment had
arrived for killing the past and coming back to life.
That's like become anthemic for me. David Gilmour wrote it.
It's about to some extent him coming out of the
(12:47):
time when Roger Waters left the band for Pink Floyd
and for Shannados who understand that stuff and about just rebuilding,
and it was so appropriate for me coming back to.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Life, right, And that's what you've done since you live
a transplant. But it's not been an easy road getting
back to health again. And you were mentioning before about
how your mind had a bit of a hammering too,
And I'm just going to ask you you don't give
that impression now. And I've seen you a lot lower
than you are now and now there's you can I
(13:19):
can see that there's joy in you, that you've got
some exuberance back and everything like that. So what's hauled
you back up out of your Basically you were depressed?
Speaker 3 (13:27):
And yeah, yeah, I was in the black Dog for
about four years. I was in communicado. I look back
at my messenger page because I'm a prolific facebooker, I
look back at my messenger page from twenty seventeen twenty eighteen,
and I just shut down. Sometimes happens with transplant patients.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
I'm very often.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
I'm now, something happens to your head and I lost it.
I pulled myself back through several ways, and I'd recommend
in New Zealand's public health systems. When it works, it
works well. I know it's stuffed in some places, but
when it works, it works magnificently.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
I let people in it.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
I had good care, I had good drugs and good
mates around me. I had a bloke who would call
me every second day and say, nought to ten, how
you're doing. He knew I was suicidal and some days
I'd say minus fifteen. He said, okay, bro, let's get
you up to two tomorrow saved my life. You've got
to have good people around you.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
That's part of it. Yeah, okay, And getting back into
work after being off work for a long time. I
think that's what a bit more spring in your step too, well.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
It has, I mean, following the liver transplant, things were
really cascaded downwards. I'd had a very successful documentary making
business went well, but a couple of couple of things
happened that just went bad. I had bad advice on
tax ended up with a horrendous tax bill, and then
I had a documentary series which was incredibly successful on TV,
(14:53):
but it absolutely stripped me bare financially and we went bankrupt.
We walked away from a beautiful little farmlet in West
Auckland and we were basically gypsies for the next eight years.
And in the middle of it all, I sent out
probably one hundred job applications and somebody did me a favor,
a young woman that I'd mentored at TV and Z. Yeah,
(15:15):
I suddenly called me up and said, hey, there's a
job going at little More Hospitally interested. I said, out
my what I was sixty eight, you know, the average
age of the other people there was, you know, in
their thirties and forties. You know. The new boss was
a forty year old dude. I went out there and
got interviewed and they said, we love you, come on board.
Transformational for a man aged sixty eight to be re
(15:36):
employed and told you've got the goods. Yes, I can't
describe how mind changing and boggling that was.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Okay, I think that'll be switching the light sime for
some people listening tonight. I mean, I think you posted
a thing about Norman Kirk a while back and about
the today. Yeah, it was it today, and it was
what people need and they don't need much. A place
to live, Well, you've got a place to live now, yeah,
and something to do. That was a big one as well,
and you've got something to do, someone to love. Was
(16:04):
that someone loving you? Yeah, it's all there.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
That's what Norm stood for but died at fifty one
and what a rate lass.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yeah, incredible. But I'm just it's great seeing so many
things coming into inter line for you thee and and
you're back with you these passions like following around this
tribute band and that that's going to and you're back
writing again too.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Yeah right, And as you said, my seventh book, and
it's the one I'm most excited about. It's called The
Courage of Women. I suddenly realized while I was in
the quasi asylum at Christmas, I had two doctors looking
after me, a Polish psychiatrist and a Serbian psychologist names
I could barely pronounce, but I suddenly realized as they
were treating me, I thought, my life's been so impacted
(16:48):
by good women, your wife chief amongst them, during during
hard days, and I was great, she's a saint. And
I went back through in my memory banks the women
who've actually impacted me. I started with remembering a beautiful
Mari Couia from the east coast of the North Island
called Julymen that was her name, July, and we followed
(17:10):
her for a year with her journey with lung cancer
because we wanted to do a story exposing the damage
that tobacco was doing to the health of Mardy woman
highest rate of lung cancer in the world at that stage.
And we did something and we campaigned, and to some
extent we worked alongside Helen Clark who was trying to
introduce legislation into parliament and things changed. And that's the
(17:31):
first story in the book.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
What other stories are there? Because I love your stories,
So tell us a story, Uncle Rob.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Yeah, well, there's so many favorites. I mean, one of
them concerns my son's mother in law. I met her
in two thousand and two, back when the Sunday program started.
She called out of the blue from Auckland Airport and
said she's I think she's Bungladeshi born or Indian born,
and she said, you've got to get out heeud of
the airport. Something tragic's happening. And we sent a researcher
(18:01):
and a cameraman out there and a woman was on
a stretch of being loaded and through the side door
of a plane, obviously completely comatose. She'd been force fed
methodone by a madman husband and she was being The
health system in New Zealand didn't want her anymore. They
sent her back to Malaysia. I went up there with
a camera and I filmed a five hours before she
passed away, absolutely reaching in my chest and gave my
(18:22):
heart to squeeze. I picked that story up again a
few years ago and I met up with Faredi Sultana,
the woman who was the head of Shakti, the Asian
Woman's Refuge organization. I picked up with her again and
I said, we've got to tell the story. She said,
it's gotten worse, and she introduced me to women from
Asia all over the country who had been beaten and
(18:44):
abused and rejected and their families in India and places
low that didn't want them back. And I had such
a passion for telling that story, and it's in this book.
And I'm so proud of my son's mother in law
because he ended up serendipitously meeting her daughter. And so
now we have an even stronger bond and I'm just
gagging to get that story out in front of people.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Okay, so your book has got to be called the Courage.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Of Women subtitled Journeys to the Crossroads of Resilience.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Right, Okay, well, I'll keep an eye out for that.
And as I say, this will be your seventh book.
Have you reatten a book about yourself?
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Well, a couple of the books that My first book
was called Brave Maid Memorable and it was about ten
really interesting journalistic experiences, everything from going to India to
find a missing backpacker right through to nine to eleven
in New York where I went five days with or
after the nine to eleven, the Twin Towers thing. That
was a lot about me. So is another book called
(19:41):
The High Voltage Edge, of which I wrote, and that's
your story. It's it's stuff that's impacted me. I like
telling the story of my life through the stories I've told.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Okay, well, you're about to write the next couple of
decades of your life. Okay, As you're writing the next
chapters of your life, what would you like them? How
would you like them to read.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
I'd like them to read mostly with an emphasis on gratitude.
What I've discovered through the journey that I've been through
is that if you wake up each day with something
to be grateful for At the moment, I seem to
be a de facto suicide counselor. I don't know how
that's happened. Maybe it's because I have stamped on my
medical record suicidal ideation.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
It's a harsh phrase.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
And somehow I've got the reputation of being someone who
can help. And so every week I am next to
people who are on the edge, and people say, boy,
that sounds good. It's that sounds tough, but I love
it because you actually you teach people the art of
something as simple as gratitude. I was told to this
woman the other day and I said, get in the
(20:52):
shower in the morning, because she doesn't want to live.
I said, get in the shower in the morning and
tell yourself three things that you are proud of yourself
for having done. And it's starting to work. It's starting
to actually, you know, along with a bit of humor
and a bit of distraction, I can see the lights
going on. And there is nothing in the world like
the experience of actually building something into the life of
(21:14):
a hurting person.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Right, And it makes so much more sense coming from
someone who's lived it, and right, Yeah, and so you've
got the book project. You've also logic a podcasts that
how's that coming a lot?
Speaker 3 (21:31):
My family say, hey, slow down, bro, you know there's
too much. Yeah, I've got an absolutely wonderful web designers.
I've had a website on hold for years and I tested.
I just did a bit of a field test.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
A while ago.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
I did a series called The Vagabond Philosopher, and I
went through the stories of ten people who absolutely inspired me,
including a man wu survive four concentration camps that I met,
guy called Max Mannheimer, right through to a guy from
America who builds hospitals for Palestinian kids who transformed my
life in twenty twelve. And I said to people, would
(22:02):
you buy into something like this if I did it
as a podcast? People said absolutely, we want to hear
those stories. So that's where I'm going next.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Okay, there's no holding your back. And hey, unfortunately we've
run out of time and I can hear Lady Gaga
playing in my headphones. I was surprised to see this
one come through as us you a pick of songs.
It's always Remember Us this Way by Lady Gaga.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
Yeah, somebody said you've got to watch A star is
born with Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga. I'd never been
into Gaga. I'm an old rock and roller and I
see this woman playing a piano saying, Arizona sky burning
in your eyes. You look at me and Babe, I
want to catch on fire. And it's a story about
a man whose life is spiraling out of control with alcoholism,
(22:45):
but he finds someone along the way that he builds into,
he builds up. It's a woman called Ali played by
Lady Gaga, and she says, I'll always remember us this way.
You found me and you rescued me. I've been found
and rescued. I'm so grateful that song, so manyful I
wanted at my funeral, Rob.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
I hope it's going to be a long long time
in the future before we hear at your Feudral But
it's a beautiful song. It's been great talking if you're Robert,
always is and wish you all the best for whatever
is coming up next.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
John, It's away is a pleasure.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
This is real life on news Talk ZEDB.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
For more from News Talk zed B, listen live on
air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever
you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio,
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk SEDB. Follow
this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio,
Real Conversation, Real Connection. It's Real Life with John Cowen
on News Talk z EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Good day, Welcome to real life. I'm John Cown and
I've done this many times, sitting down and having a
good chat with my very good friend and broadcaster and
author Rob Harley. It's usually just other people in the
cafe listening and Rob, but tonight there might be a
few thousand listening in as well. And it's always good
because I don't know anyone who's done as many interesting
(00:53):
things as as you, and someone who has reflected as
deeply upon them. So it's great having you on the show. Rob.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
What an absolute pleasure to see you again, my friend.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
All right, So many of the people listening may remember
you as the fresh faced report and journalist tripping around
the planet making gritty TV journalists on television. They might
be shocked to learn that you're now seventy. Were you shocked?
Speaker 3 (01:19):
I wrote a series of articles on Facebook called Sobering
Thoughts on turning seventy, and I talked about everything from
the decay in my teeth, to my regard for my
father who wouldn't let me get him on the internet,
right through to the things that I was grateful for
as I look out at my lovely view now over
the Kuipra Harbor.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Right, so you've ended up sort of saying, oh, well,
it's seventy, but it's not too bad.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
I don't know what seventy is. They say it's the
new sixty, but it feels pretty darn good. You know,
you'd remember when you're about eighteen, forty seems ancient. Seventy
is slightly scary. I mean, you realize someone used the
phrase the last third, the third third of your life.
I'm well into the third third. My allotted span is up,
(02:06):
and how many years I've got to go who knows.
But it's good to feel that you can make the
most of them and that people are still interested in
what you have to say.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
And it's a time, I guess, for doing sensible, mature
growing up things like going on a ride on a
biking gang of a bunch of Harley's. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
I had an old mate called Dazz and he called
me up last year and said, we'd like you to
be the honorary rider on a tour of the South Island,
and I couldn't resist. He used to be in a
church I used to pastor. He was there when he
was eight years old, and he went to prison a
few times, and he ranked me up in Wellington years
ago and said, hey, I've reformed.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
I'm now.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
I think he was almost a millionaire at that stage.
And he said, come with us with a bunch of
bikes called the Redeemed. We're going to go through the
South Island and raise some money for a good cause.
And I thought, look, that's the most fun you can
have with all your clothes on. So I went to
christ Church. Hadn't been on a bike for a number
of years, shakerly yet, but we got back on a
beautiful Harvey Softail heritage and off I went.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
All right. Now, those guys also were telling lots of stories,
and they had stories to tell. Offened have changed lives absolutely.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
I mean, these are guys who've all got a past.
And I heard them speak in little community groups and
open air campaigns and churches up and down the country.
I mean. One woman that absolutely blew me away was
a little lady called Anna, and she talked about you know,
having seen her son hanging from a tree. You know,
(03:32):
he was a deeply depressed young man. She went and
she thought he was dead. She cut him down. She
got on her knees and she said, to God, give
him back to me, and I'll see if I can
make something of his life. Well, she's, you know, joyfully
telling me about this at some barbecue and in Vicicago
we'd gone down to the Monroe Classic, and she said,
guess what, he's thirty four now, and he's about to
have his first child. And stories like that just came
(03:57):
tumbling out. These were guys that got on the stage,
jump and down the country with incredible confidence. Gentlest guys
she could meet, big leather clad boys and girls.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
I saw the pictures. They didn't look like gentle but
they looked like a bunch.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Of they look they look slightly scary, but they were
gentle giants.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yeah, and then amongst them is this seventy year old
Parker having the time of his life.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Well, I learned all sorts of things. I learned that.
I mean, every day I've got a hug a hony auricus.
And that felt pretty done good. I thought, I'm going
to do this again, but a great entree into your
eighth decade.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Now, these guys their lives were changed around by Christianity.
You've been a Christian since your teens, and it's not
unusual as decades go by for the some of the
crisp bages to get worn off in a person's Christian faith,
and they can be a bit cynical, bit crusty. Did
something like this sort of change your own attitudes and
(04:52):
ideas about spiritual life.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
I've always been lucky in that the contact I've had
through both my journalism and my years. I've spent fifteen
years as a pastor of a church, I've had the
privilege of getting to know real people. When I did
a TV series the late nineties called Extreme Close Up TV,
and Z indulged me and said, yeah, you can do
a series about faith.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Actually they went to three series.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
It did and it got up approximately without Scotty and
got with all the repeats, got about four million views.
And when I pitched this through, I said, we're not
going to go inside churches. We're going to go on
street level and see people whose faith changes things. And
in doing that, you know, I'd sometimes come back to
(05:35):
the office with the videotape in my hand from an
interview we've done, and I talked to my co producer
and said, this is this is just gold, It's real gold.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
And so that's so you've always been exposed, I guess
to the idea that people's lives can be turned around.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, warts and all. And that's the thing
about it. You know. I grew up in a fairly
fundamentalist church to begin with, where I sort of gained
the idea you had to be perfect. But the more
I went on, I realized that people are frail, and
if you have a concept of God, God's actually okay
with that. You know. I was in a prison in
Canada with the former Great New Zealand a rockstar, Bunny Walters,
(06:14):
and Bundy was heavily into drugs and booze, and he'd
transformed so radically. He was going into Canadian prisons and
he was turning around the lives of rapists and murderers.
I was sitting there filming this and I asked him
at a critical point. I was down on Fort Street
with him in Auckland City and I said, dude, be
honest with me, have you beaten the drugs? And the
booze totally yet, and he said, nah, I'm still working
(06:37):
on it. And I thought, isn't that amazing that that
guy's still being used and effective around the world while
he's still on the journey.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
What do they call that, wounded soldiers or something? There's
a phrase for it. I guess. Wow, there was a
great wounded healers. Yeah, there was a.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Great song back in the seventies, you know, back in
the early Jesus People era, guy called Chuck Gerard and
he wrote a song called Don't shoot the wounded. Don't
shoot the wounded. They need us more than ever. And
that's what I found, that wounded people are sometimes the
best healers.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Or you had a fairly deep word yourself, I mean
inflicted by surgeons a few years ago, I guess it'd
be eight years ago.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Now, eight and a half years ago. I was wheeled
into an operating theater at Auckland City Hospital on the
seventh floor, where one of the best liver transplant surgeons
in the world I was lucky enough to have, went
to work on me, pulled my old diseased liver out
and gave me a new one. Afterwards, you said, Rob,
you had two weeks to live, and we got you
just in time. Yeah, man, was I grateful never found
(07:36):
who the donor was, but you'd know yourself from your
own life experience. What the value of someone having that
word donor on their driver's license is it is.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
I'd encourage everyone not only just to put it on
your license, but to talk to your family too to
We just need more and more donors. There's people that
need them. My wife's life's been my wife's livee's being
saved and changed by a lung transplant, and absolutely those
donors that are so vital. But I remember seeing you
not long before that, and I've seen dead people looking
healthier than you were looking at the time.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
You told me I looked like Homer Simpson. You also
accused me of swearing at you, of which I have
no recollection. I had a condition caught out in carefully,
which is where you live, a sinzemonia to your brain,
and you're absolutely out of your mind.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Oh god, I'd hardly agree with that diagnosis that you are.
You were lively, shall we say that? Yeah? No, that
was a very very dramatic time. Were planning such a
wonderful funeral for you. Rober and we never got around
to having it. You've had this extension and now I'm
just wondering reflecting on that. And you were talking before
(08:39):
about people's lives changing and things like that. Has it
changed your perspective on things at all? Oh?
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Of course, I mean at a slightly humorous level. I
think I must have got the liver. I would love
to have met the family of the person who gave
me that liver. It must have been a young fit buck.
Because my hair started going My hair started going black again.
It was totally gray. And my sister in law pointed
out to me on my brother's sixtieth birthday, Hey, bro,
(09:04):
your hair's gone black again. But no, look, I've had
unbounded in induce since then. And modern modern medicine isn't
just a flaming miracle. You know. I'm on a pillar
in the morning and a pillot night, a little drug
called tacrolamus. It's an anti rejection drug, and you know
it's a present and I'm as right as rain.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Yeah, that's fantastic, And may you continue to do that
and then look forward to interviewing you just after your
eightieth Perhaps can we put that in the Sam, can
you just put that in the pull up diary if
I'm spared? Yeah. Now, I'm glad your body made it
through all that trauma. But you've been subjecting your mind
to a fair bit of trauma over many years, hauling
(09:44):
yourself off to places like Kosovo and Cambodia and Africa
and wherever there's strife and misery and everything like that.
There's Rob Harley with a camera. For decades, you were
doing that type of stuff and that's got to take
a toll. It did.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
In fact, Christmas last year, I had a bit of
a meltdown. I clocked up fifty years is what I
call a scribbler, a journalist, and most of it on
the end of a television camera in front of a
TV camera. And I got together with some mates and
we'd been to war zones and we started reflecting on
you know, places we've been where you know, I remember Cambodia.
(10:21):
We were at a water festival filming a couple of
women working for an aid organization. We just got out
in time before four hundred people were trampled to death
in a stampede. We got out the next morning. A
guy called Scotti McKinnon and I we both had cameras
an almost robot like we went into the grounds of
a hospital and we just filmed were the bodies of
fifty to sixty dead teenagers with toe tags on, with
(10:43):
people trying to identify them. That stuff never came back
and bit me on the bum till years later. In fact,
it did at the end of last year, along with
so much other stuff I've seen. It gets into your
head and at some point the payment falls due.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
It really does. Hey, I'd like to talk to you
more about what actually helps you get over that. How
do you build resilience back into yourself? How do you
And you've been with people going through really really tough
times and you've seen them bounce back. You've bounced back
yourself to a large extent. I would to find out
a few tips about what works for you. We'll do
that after the ad break. I'm talking with Rob Harley,
(11:18):
journalist and author. He's working on a seventh book. Now
I'm going to talk to him about that and more
about what he's done and what he's doing. This is
real life on News Talks EDB.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Intelligent interviews with interesting people. It's real life on News
Talks EDB.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Welcome back to real life. My guest's eyes are glazing
over with passion. Rob Harley is my guest tonight. And
you think some Pink Floyd there.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Yeah, coming back to life. I talked before about having surgery,
you know, and I had my headphones on as I
was being wheeled into surgery on fourth of January twenty sixteen,
and I wanted a song to inspire me. And I'd
been a Pink Floyd and not for years. In fact,
I'm making a documentary at the moment on a band
called The Pink Floyd Experience. I've been following them around
New Zealand for a year. We did a twelve camera
(12:22):
shoot with them at a constant recently blows my best
tribute band on the planet.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Anyway.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
That's just a very quick plug. But coming back to life.
There's a line in it which is I took a
heavenly ride through our silence. I knew the moment had
arrived for killing the past and coming back to life.
That's like become anthemic for me. David Gilmour wrote it.
It's about to some extent him coming out of the
(12:47):
time when Roger Waters left the band for Pink Floyd
and for Shannados who understand that stuff and about just rebuilding,
and it was so appropriate for me coming back to.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Life, right, And that's what you've done since you live
a transplant. But it's not been an easy road getting
back to health again. And you were mentioning before about
how your mind had a bit of a hammering too,
And I'm just going to ask you you don't give
that impression now. And I've seen you a lot lower
than you are now and now there's you can I
(13:19):
can see that there's joy in you, that you've got
some exuberance back and everything like that. So what's hauled
you back up out of your Basically you were depressed?
Speaker 3 (13:27):
And yeah, yeah, I was in the black Dog for
about four years. I was in communicado. I look back
at my messenger page because I'm a prolific facebooker, I
look back at my messenger page from twenty seventeen twenty eighteen,
and I just shut down. Sometimes happens with transplant patients.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
I'm very often.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
I'm now, something happens to your head and I lost it.
I pulled myself back through several ways, and I'd recommend
in New Zealand's public health systems. When it works, it
works well. I know it's stuffed in some places, but
when it works, it works magnificently.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
I let people in it.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
I had good care, I had good drugs and good
mates around me. I had a bloke who would call
me every second day and say, nought to ten, how
you're doing. He knew I was suicidal and some days
I'd say minus fifteen. He said, okay, bro, let's get
you up to two tomorrow saved my life. You've got
to have good people around you.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
That's part of it. Yeah, okay, And getting back into
work after being off work for a long time. I
think that's what a bit more spring in your step too, well.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
It has, I mean, following the liver transplant, things were
really cascaded downwards. I'd had a very successful documentary making
business went well, but a couple of couple of things
happened that just went bad. I had bad advice on
tax ended up with a horrendous tax bill, and then
I had a documentary series which was incredibly successful on TV,
(14:53):
but it absolutely stripped me bare financially and we went bankrupt.
We walked away from a beautiful little farmlet in West
Auckland and we were basically gypsies for the next eight years.
And in the middle of it all, I sent out
probably one hundred job applications and somebody did me a favor,
a young woman that I'd mentored at TV and Z. Yeah,
(15:15):
I suddenly called me up and said, hey, there's a
job going at little More Hospitally interested. I said, out
my what I was sixty eight, you know, the average
age of the other people there was, you know, in
their thirties and forties. You know. The new boss was
a forty year old dude. I went out there and
got interviewed and they said, we love you, come on board.
Transformational for a man aged sixty eight to be re
(15:36):
employed and told you've got the goods. Yes, I can't
describe how mind changing and boggling that was.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Okay, I think that'll be switching the light sime for
some people listening tonight. I mean, I think you posted
a thing about Norman Kirk a while back and about
the today. Yeah, it was it today, and it was
what people need and they don't need much. A place
to live, Well, you've got a place to live now, yeah,
and something to do. That was a big one as well,
and you've got something to do, someone to love. Was
(16:04):
that someone loving you? Yeah, it's all there.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
That's what Norm stood for but died at fifty one
and what a rate lass.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yeah, incredible. But I'm just it's great seeing so many
things coming into inter line for you thee and and
you're back with you these passions like following around this
tribute band and that that's going to and you're back
writing again too.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Yeah right, And as you said, my seventh book, and
it's the one I'm most excited about. It's called The
Courage of Women. I suddenly realized while I was in
the quasi asylum at Christmas, I had two doctors looking
after me, a Polish psychiatrist and a Serbian psychologist names
I could barely pronounce, but I suddenly realized as they
were treating me, I thought, my life's been so impacted
(16:48):
by good women, your wife chief amongst them, during during
hard days, and I was great, she's a saint. And
I went back through in my memory banks the women
who've actually impacted me. I started with remembering a beautiful
Mari Couia from the east coast of the North Island
called Julymen that was her name, July, and we followed
(17:10):
her for a year with her journey with lung cancer
because we wanted to do a story exposing the damage
that tobacco was doing to the health of Mardy woman
highest rate of lung cancer in the world at that stage.
And we did something and we campaigned, and to some
extent we worked alongside Helen Clark who was trying to
introduce legislation into parliament and things changed. And that's the
(17:31):
first story in the book.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
What other stories are there? Because I love your stories,
So tell us a story, Uncle Rob.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Yeah, well, there's so many favorites. I mean, one of
them concerns my son's mother in law. I met her
in two thousand and two, back when the Sunday program started.
She called out of the blue from Auckland Airport and
said she's I think she's Bungladeshi born or Indian born,
and she said, you've got to get out heeud of
the airport. Something tragic's happening. And we sent a researcher
(18:01):
and a cameraman out there and a woman was on
a stretch of being loaded and through the side door
of a plane, obviously completely comatose. She'd been force fed
methodone by a madman husband and she was being The
health system in New Zealand didn't want her anymore. They
sent her back to Malaysia. I went up there with
a camera and I filmed a five hours before she
passed away, absolutely reaching in my chest and gave my
(18:22):
heart to squeeze. I picked that story up again a
few years ago and I met up with Faredi Sultana,
the woman who was the head of Shakti, the Asian
Woman's Refuge organization. I picked up with her again and
I said, we've got to tell the story. She said,
it's gotten worse, and she introduced me to women from
Asia all over the country who had been beaten and
(18:44):
abused and rejected and their families in India and places
low that didn't want them back. And I had such
a passion for telling that story, and it's in this book.
And I'm so proud of my son's mother in law
because he ended up serendipitously meeting her daughter. And so
now we have an even stronger bond and I'm just
gagging to get that story out in front of people.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Okay, so your book has got to be called the Courage.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Of Women subtitled Journeys to the Crossroads of Resilience.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Right, Okay, well, I'll keep an eye out for that.
And as I say, this will be your seventh book.
Have you reatten a book about yourself?
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Well, a couple of the books that My first book
was called Brave Maid Memorable and it was about ten
really interesting journalistic experiences, everything from going to India to
find a missing backpacker right through to nine to eleven
in New York where I went five days with or
after the nine to eleven, the Twin Towers thing. That
was a lot about me. So is another book called
(19:41):
The High Voltage Edge, of which I wrote, and that's
your story. It's it's stuff that's impacted me. I like
telling the story of my life through the stories I've told.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Okay, well, you're about to write the next couple of
decades of your life. Okay, As you're writing the next
chapters of your life, what would you like them? How
would you like them to read.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
I'd like them to read mostly with an emphasis on gratitude.
What I've discovered through the journey that I've been through
is that if you wake up each day with something
to be grateful for At the moment, I seem to
be a de facto suicide counselor. I don't know how
that's happened. Maybe it's because I have stamped on my
medical record suicidal ideation.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
It's a harsh phrase.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
And somehow I've got the reputation of being someone who
can help. And so every week I am next to
people who are on the edge, and people say, boy,
that sounds good. It's that sounds tough, but I love
it because you actually you teach people the art of
something as simple as gratitude. I was told to this
woman the other day and I said, get in the
(20:52):
shower in the morning, because she doesn't want to live.
I said, get in the shower in the morning and
tell yourself three things that you are proud of yourself
for having done. And it's starting to work. It's starting
to actually, you know, along with a bit of humor
and a bit of distraction, I can see the lights
going on. And there is nothing in the world like
the experience of actually building something into the life of
(21:14):
a hurting person.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Right, And it makes so much more sense coming from
someone who's lived it, and right, Yeah, and so you've
got the book project. You've also logic a podcasts that
how's that coming a lot?
Speaker 3 (21:31):
My family say, hey, slow down, bro, you know there's
too much. Yeah, I've got an absolutely wonderful web designers.
I've had a website on hold for years and I tested.
I just did a bit of a field test.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
A while ago.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
I did a series called The Vagabond Philosopher, and I
went through the stories of ten people who absolutely inspired me,
including a man wu survive four concentration camps that I met,
guy called Max Mannheimer, right through to a guy from
America who builds hospitals for Palestinian kids who transformed my
life in twenty twelve. And I said to people, would
(22:02):
you buy into something like this if I did it
as a podcast? People said absolutely, we want to hear
those stories. So that's where I'm going next.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Okay, there's no holding your back. And hey, unfortunately we've
run out of time and I can hear Lady Gaga
playing in my headphones. I was surprised to see this
one come through as us you a pick of songs.
It's always Remember Us this Way by Lady Gaga.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
Yeah, somebody said you've got to watch A star is
born with Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga. I'd never been
into Gaga. I'm an old rock and roller and I
see this woman playing a piano saying, Arizona sky burning
in your eyes. You look at me and Babe, I
want to catch on fire. And it's a story about
a man whose life is spiraling out of control with alcoholism,
(22:45):
but he finds someone along the way that he builds into,
he builds up. It's a woman called Ali played by
Lady Gaga, and she says, I'll always remember us this way.
You found me and you rescued me. I've been found
and rescued. I'm so grateful that song, so manyful I
wanted at my funeral, Rob.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
I hope it's going to be a long long time
in the future before we hear at your Feudral But
it's a beautiful song. It's been great talking if you're Robert,
always is and wish you all the best for whatever
is coming up next.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
John, It's away is a pleasure.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
This is real life on news Talk ZEDB.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
For more from News Talk zed B, listen live on
air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever
you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio,
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