Proper True Yarn

This week Knuckles sits down with Michael Crossland, one of Australia’s most in demand inspirational speakers, who made the trip up from Coffs Harbour to share the parts of his story he never tells on stage. Fair warning, Knuckles was in tears two minutes in, and this is only part one.

Diagnosed at 11 months old with stage four neuroblastoma and sent home with a 96 per cent death rate, Michael’s life was shaped by his mum’s decision to see it as 4 per cent full instead of 96 per cent empty. Chemo started on his first birthday. Then came the 11 hour train rides between Sydney and Coffs Harbour, an 11 kilo tumour wrapped around his heart, and his mum carrying him into surgery because the doctors told her it might be the last time she held her little boy alive.

When the treatment stopped working, the family signed onto an experimental drug being trialled on 25 kids around the world. Within a day they were all in the burns unit, wrapped in bandages and laid in ice baths, burning from the outside in. Within 90 days, 24 of the 25 were gone. Michael was the only survivor, and he’ll tell you he’s one of the lucky ones, not because he lived, but because he wasn’t his mum.

Find Michael’s speaking work and his bestselling book Everything Will Be OK at michaelcrossland.com

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The tables get turned this week as Knuckles puts Zak Palmas, the man behind the cam, in front of it for some proper true yarns from growing up on a cane farm outside Ingham, North Queensland.

First up, the story of two 16 year old mates who couldn’t find a car to get from a bush doof into town, so they took a lawnmower instead. Twenty minutes of road, a pair of L plates, and a phone call to the cops later, both of them were done for drink driving and ended up on the news.

Then the big one. Zak was slashing water furrows in the dry season when a worn slip clutch threw sparks into a trash-covered paddock, and by the time he noticed, the tractor wheels were already hot. What follows is a flat-out sprint, a one-man water tanker hookup that should’ve been impossible, and every farmer in the district turning up unasked to cut breaks and save the uncut cane. His dad’s favourite tractor didn’t make it, but as the boys say, you can get another tractor, you can’t get another life.

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A 22 seater fixed wing, four hours, no toilet, and you can't stand up in it. That was the ride home every swing.
So the boys would hit the bottle-o before the hangar, sink tins waiting for the plane, keep going once they were on it, and bring an empty Gatorade bottle for the obvious reason. One bloke had about six beers after a ten hour shift, filled his bottle, and kept going. The plane sits on a slight angle. Everyone's in boots so nobody notices. The admin lady up the front had her shoes off.
That's the flight they got banned from drinking on. They drank anyway.
Then the other one. They flew directly into one of the biggest dust storms in New South Wales history, dropped what Zak reckons was a thousand feet in one hit, and the bloke next to him wasn't belted in. Zak watched him go into the roof and stay there. He watched the pilots come out of their seats. He rang his mum. Fifteen minutes of it, a crosswind landing at 45 degrees, a go around straight back into it, and a pilot of 35 years standing on the tarmac afterwards saying that was the worst turbulence he'd ever experienced and he thought they were dead.
Cheers, cunt. So did we.
Which is why the episode ends where it does. When they tell you to belt up, it isn't because they're wankers.
#propertrueyarn
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Zak spent years underground before he got into coal, and the mine he won't name was the most eye opening job of his life.
There was a bloke dealing gear out of a lunchbox in the workshop. There was a group of them at it, and they never got caught, because between them they had fake dicks and bottles of clean piss ready to go. Right up until the day the site tested everyone in the morning, brought them all back up to the surface mid shift, and tested them again.
There's a fitter knocking on Zak's door at four in the morning holding an oil sample bottle. There's a bloke sitting in a jumbo in his jocks because it was too hot, doing racks, because he was bored waiting for a sparky. There's a fist fight that broke out beside Zak while he had his hands in a thousand volt cabinet. There's a store lady, a diesel fitter, and a set of cameras that nobody told them about.
And there's a leading hand who was asked to fill a condom, filled it right to the brim, and got it slapped straight back across him.
Underneath all of it: Zak started having nightmares about the roof coming in. That's why he moved to coal.
#propertrueyarn
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Drake has cycled more money through a betting account in one month than most towns are worth, and he still can't pick a winner.
Zak's got Google out and we're going through the whole lot. A 37% strike rate. $770k on Canada. $1.5 million on Argentina to beat Spain, and Spain get up 1-0 in extra time. A million dollars on Argentina to beat France in 2022. Argentina win, and he still loses on a technicality. And then the one that started the whole curse conversation: a million on Conor McGregor against Max Holloway at UFC 329, and Conor's leg goes seconds into the comeback.
The UFC and boxing list is brutal. Tyson. Usyk. Tommy Fury. Adesanya. He does win occasionally, Izzy in the rematch and Jon Jones by submission, but the man once posted a screenshot showing $124.5 million wagered in thirty days.
Then we go looking for the biggest punts ever laid. Mattress Mack turning a $3 million bet into $75 million US when the Astros took the 2022 World Series, which is $117 million in real money. And a bloke in 1980 who walked into the Horseshoe with a suitcase holding $777,000, put the lot on one roll of the dice, and won.
Baked beans or rib fillet. The choice is yours.
#propertrueyarn
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