CEO Update - Taking a break

Taking a break

As I have flagged previously, I will be taking a break over the next six weeks.

I will spend some of that time at the Garma Festival in East Arnhem Land with a delegation of about 20 members of Mental Health Australia and Carers Australia. While not entirely a break, it is certainly a break from the routine, camped on important Yolngu Country, and learning more about the local people and about Indigenous aspirations at an important time in the Australian political discourse. I expect the Uluru Statement and Constitutional recognition will be high on the agenda, and I look forward to hearing much of the nation’s Indigenous leadership discussing these issues at the festival.

But it certainly won’t be all work. For much of my time away I will be exploring and camping in remote Australia. I consider this a great privilege.

I have the sense that all our work has become more and more intense. So many meetings, so many teleconferences, so much travel. So many events that are task focussed: that is, trying to resolve some particular problem or to formulate some kind of action plan.

As much as I love my work I am honestly looking forward to a break from all of that.

I am very much looking forward to watching the sunrise and sunset. I am looking forward to focussing my attention on some of the basics - where to camp, what to eat, where to walk to, whether to fish or not! I am looking forward to spending some time with my long term partner and wife Jane, that is, not managing the jobs around the house, or working out the logistics of managing our children.

I acknowledge that this is, in part, an investment in my own mental health.

I have always found connection with nature to be restorative. Similarly, I have always found time away from busy daily schedules restorative. I understand this to be a form of mindfulness, though I do not really consider myself to be a practitioner in any formal sense.

It is a reminder for me that time out is important, and that the opportunity to take that time out (which I recognise is not an opportunity open to everyone) is a gift to be embraced.

In my absence I have asked a number of friends and colleagues to write a weekly blog for me. Lachlan Searle will progress this over the next six weeks, and I hope they bring you some refreshing perspectives!

I hope to be back with a spring in my step in early September.

Warm regards,

Frank Quinlan
CEO, Mental Health Australia