Former military intelligence analyst Michael Ball reveals how 11 years in the shadows of Australian defence shaped his debut young adult novel featuring a terrorist attack at Adelaide Oval.
In a conversation that peels back layers of both fiction and reality, Michael Ball demonstrates why Adelaide sits at the heart of Australia’s intelligence network while his character Zoe Baird navigates a bio-terror plot during a pop concert. Ball’s journey from RAAF intelligence sergeant to published author reveals the hidden world of modern espionage, where accountants and IT managers pose greater threats than gun-wielding operatives, and where Adelaide’s unassuming facade masks its role as a significant intelligence hub.
The SA Drink of the Week delivers a genuine surprise as Bickford’s new sugar-free cordial range passes the ultimate test of a self-proclaimed “super taster” who typically rejects artificial sweeteners. These magnificent recreations using fruit juice concentrate and stevia prove that innovation can honour tradition without compromise.
Our Musical Pilgrimage celebrates the decade that defined a generation with Denim and Stripes, an original eighties anthem crafted for radio newsreader extraordinnaire, Mel Usher, weaving together Madonna’s Adelaide Oval concert memories with the fashion and music that shaped an era.
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Running Sheet: Bomb Plot At Adelaide Oval With Michael Ball And Zoe Baird
00:00:00 Intro
Introduction
00:03:43 SA Drink Of The Week
This week’s SA Drinks Of The Week, are the five flavours available in Bickford’s new sugar-free cordial range.
When Sofia from Bickford’s reached out offering samples of their new sugar-free cordial range, my immediate instinct was decline. As a self-proclaimed super taster with hypersensitive olfactory sensors, artificial sweeteners typically leave a metallic, clingy aftertaste that ruins any drinking experience. My honesty about this aversion only strengthened Sofia’s determination to prove these products different.
The verdict: these cordials are magnificent. Released during Dry July, Bickford’s has achieved something remarkable with their five-flavour range including lime juice, lemon juice, tropical, lemon lime bitters, and raspberry. Using fruit juice concentrate for flavour and a naturally derived stevia blend for sweetness, they’ve eliminated the telltale artificial aftertaste that plagues most sugar-free alternatives.
The lime cordial, crucial to get right given Bickford’s heritage, delivers authentic citrus punch without compromise. The raspberry, typically the most challenging flavour to recreate without leaving tanginess from artificial substitutes, tastes indistinguishable from its sugared counterpart. At just eight calories per serve and available nationally through Coles, these cordials prove that innovation can honour tradition.
For anyone who’s sworn off sugar-free beverages after previous disappointments, these warrant one more attempt.
00:08:18 Michael Ball
Michael Ball’s entrance into our studio carries the quiet confidence of someone who spent over a decade analysing threats most of us never consider. His latest novel drops readers directly into Adelaide Oval during a terrorist attack, but this isn’t mere sensationalism. Ball knows something most South Australians don’t: our seemingly sleepy state operates as a genuine intelligence hotbed.
“Adelaide is a hotbed of intelligence and spies,” Ball reveals, explaining how military intelligence units, research facilities, and cutting-edge technology create exactly the environment where modern espionage thrives. “Spies these days aren’t James Bond running in with guns. If you’re doing that, something’s gone horribly wrong.” Today’s intelligence operatives work as accountants and IT managers, quietly extracting data without dramatic car chases or explosions that would signal operational failure.
The conversation takes a fascinating turn as Ball explains his role as an intelligence analyst, serving as the enemy’s representative in planning rooms. Using empathy as a weapon, analysts must think like adversaries to provide decision superiority. “You cannot climb Mount Everest without climbing all the other hills and mountains beforehand,” he explains when discussing resilience, connecting military discipline to the broader challenges facing young people today.
Ball’s path to writing began during a severe mental health episode, part of the PTSD that affects many intelligence veterans. His wife’s challenge that “you always give up” sparked the determination to complete his fantasy novel, but it was watching his three-year-old daughter enjoy Taylor Swift that triggered the darker inspiration for Zoe Baird’s story. The bastard in him, as he puts it, wondered what would happen if someone deployed a bio-weapon at such an event.
The author’s approach to character development draws directly from his intelligence training. Writing 14-year-old Zoe required the same psychological profiling skills he used to understand enemy mindsets. Listening to Paramore songs on repeat for ten days, Ball immersed himself in the emotional landscape of his protagonist, creating a character his daughter could admire when older.
“I wanted this to be a character that my daughter can read when she’s older and want to be like,” Ball explains. Zoe succeeds not through superhuman abilities but through intelligence, resourcefulness, and resilience. She fails frequently but continues forward, embodying the same qualities Ball taught in his military leadership workshops.
Ball’s current work with Disaster Relief Australia provides another lens through which to understand his writing. Veterans flock to disaster zones because “a disaster zone is just a war zone without bullets,” offering familiar territory where they can serve again while processing their own trauma. The organisation’s research proves that helping others reduces PTSD symptoms, creating a positive cycle of service and recovery.
The author’s workshops in schools teach failure as a learning tool, using intelligence concepts like center of gravity to help students identify what truly matters in their goals. His four-stage failure framework helps young people understand that most setbacks stem from unclear goals, changing circumstances, bad advice, or lack of proper support systems.
Learn more about Zoe Baird and her novels and if you see this before September 26, 2025, you can enter the art competition Michael discusses. Primary and Secondary school artists could win $500 and have their artwork featured in Zoe’s next novel.
Zoe Baird’s: Popstars & Pathogens on Amazon.
It Didn’t Start With You, by Mark Wolynn.
01:34:09 Musical Pilgrimage
In the Musical Pilgrimate, we play a track by Steve Davis & The Virtualosos, Denim & Stripes, a new 80’s anthem written for Adelaide newsreader, Mel Usher.
Adelaide Oval’s role as the setting for Michael Ball’s fictional terrorist attack connects to its reality as a venue for major international artists, from Madonna and the Rolling Stones to Adele and Pink. This link to pop culture stardom provides the perfect bridge to celebrate one of South Australia’s most recognisable media personalities.
Radio newsreader Mel Usher’s recent milestone birthday revealed her status as an absolute tragic for eighties culture. Her social media shares about denim, stripes, and the decade’s distinctive fashion aesthetic sparked inspiration for a collaborative tribute. Steve wrote the song and then used his virtual session band, Steve Davis & The Virtualosos to bring it to life, crafting an eighties anthem that weaves together the era’s defining musical and fashion elements.
“Denim and Stripes” celebrates everything that made the decade memorable: the fashion choices we now view with nostalgic affection, the music that defined a generation, and the unapologetic embrace of style over subtlety. From peroxide tips to padded shoulders and acid-wash, the song captures the decade’s spirit for anyone who lived through or appreciates that transformative period in popular culture.
The track is now available across all streaming platforms, serving as both a birthday tribute to Mel and a broader celebration of the decade that continues to influence contemporary style and sound.
Here’s this week’s preview video
There is no featured video this week.
SFX: Throughout the podcast we use free SFX from freesfx.co.uk for the harp, the visa stamp, the silent movie music, the stylus, the radio signal SFX, the wine pouring and cork pulling SFX, and the swooshes around Siri.
An AI generated transcript – there will be errors. Check quotes against the actual audio (if you would like to volunteer as an editor, let Steve know)
417-The Adelaide Show
Steve Davis: [00:00:00] Yeah, there you go. Don’t adjust your set. If we didn’t have the world of, um, copyright, et cetera, I would’ve loved to have opened with those base notes of James Bond’s theme, because espionage or in military intelligence is one of the dominant themes in our conversation today. Primarily because our main guest, Michael Ball, who is an author who has just.
Released, uh, the first of a series of books featuring his character. Zoe Baird joins me in the studio. He worked for 11 years in military intelligence for Australia, primarily with the RAAF. And we answer a lot of questions about what that sort of life is, what, uh, like what the work is like, et cetera. And demystifying some of the myths that characters like James Bond create.
If what happens in a James Bond movie was happening [00:01:00] and Michael’s opinion, that means your espionage work has failed, he’ll elaborate on that. Uh, and also he has a lot of interesting stuff that he brings to schools with some free workshops he does in schools, particularly in South Australia. But I’m sure he’d travel if he was asked to about resilience, et cetera, for kids and ways to apply this, this intel kind of thinking to breaking down situations.
Anyway, more of that coming up. And yes, I drink of the week. We are dipping into the world of Bickford’s and there is a twist. They have new cordials out and they are free of sugar and I almost. Uh, didn’t ask for any to sample, but changed my mind. Was that a good move or not? And the reason I hesitated is I’m not a fan of the tangy aftertaste that some of the sugar substitutes brings to the palate.
What is in store for Bickford’s? And then we’re gonna finish off with a song [00:02:00] in the musical pilgrimage that ties everything together. It’s one that I have, uh, produced and written, uh, for Mel Usher, who is a famous newsreader here in South Australia, and a tragic eighties fan. It’s her eighties anthem, and it just fits in.
As you’ll soon be aware with the theme of Zoe Baird, the character that Michael Ball created. All that coming up in this episode of the Adelaide Show.
TAS Theme: Lady, the refugees lady[00:03:00]
Caitlin Davis: in the spirit of Reconciliation. The H Show podcast acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout South Australia and their connections to land, sea, and community. We pay our respects to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.
TAS Theme: That lady, lady,
lady lady,
Steve Davis: for the SA drink of the week this week. There is no alcohol in sight, nor is there any sugar. And I must let you in on a little story. You see, Bickford’s has a new no added sugar cordial range. It’s got [00:04:00] five flavors in the fold. We have lime juice. Of course, it’d have to be lime juice. That’s what Bickford’s is famous for.
Uh, a lemon juice, cordial, tropical cordal, lemon lime in bitters and raspberry. They’re all sugar free. And when Sofia, who’s overseeing some of their PR reached out to say, look, we’ve got these. Would you like to try some for the Adela show? I actually said, look, maybe I’ve never had success with any drink that’s sugar free because the substitutes for sugar leave a metallic clingy taste in your mouth and, and I’m what people call a super taster, my olfactory, my nose, and all those sensors are hypersensitive.
So I’m picking up stuff that maybe not everyone picks up. So it’s worse for me. And you know what she said? She said, okay, so you are saying you don’t want the samples. You’re telling me why. That just makes me want to send [00:05:00] you some because she was curious to see if they’d pass. Must. Well, I won’t keep you out or in suspense any longer.
They are magnificent. They are magnificent. They were released earlier in July for dry July, et cetera. So we’ve missed that boat. But these should be a staple if you’d like to dabble in a little cordial here and there, whether it’s, you know, cordial just to drink through the through summer or whether you are doing some mixes or even mocktails.
Um, I heartily recommend this and so far I’ve worked my way through the lime and the raspberry ’cause I figured they’re gonna be the two that are their flagship. If lime didn’t get right, that would be a worry. And raspberry is one of those flavors that can leave that tangy aftertaste when it’s got, you know, Zach and all those sorts of things in it.
But nothing, this is incredible. I am completely blown away. By [00:06:00] how Bickford’s has knocked this completely out of the park. So what they’ve got is, uh, fruit juice concentrate to get the flavors there. And there is some stevia. It’s a stevia, I don’t even know how to pronounce this, a stevia, um, rool blend. Uh, so it’s a naturally devi, uh, derived sugar substitute.
And I tell you, eight calories per serve is all it lands, and they’re available nationally in coals at the moment. They’re pretty amazing. I would hardly recommend you try some if you wish to. Well have a cordial that has no sugar, but at the same time, if you’ve been, you know, once bitten, three times shy with these, uh, no added sugar cordials, it’s worth one more try because I would’ve called it.
In fact, I would’ve either. Told you how much the aftertaste [00:07:00] was there or it would just never have appeared on the Adelaide show. And I would’ve told Sofia that it’s not for me. But I’m glad she had the endeavor and the interest to see this through because these are magnificent. And the packaging that came also had some wonderful ideas.
There are different, uh, mocktails and other mixes you can do with them. I’m sure they’d be on their website too. The ginger citrus spritz using their lemon cordial, a tropical sunset punch with their tropical cordial botanical bitters, uh, which is a really interesting, uh, mocktail they’ve made there with lemon lime bitters cordial, the berry lemon smash with their raspberry and a kiwi ginger no heto, uh, with their lime juice cordial.
So Heartly recommended for the sa drink of the week, the bickford’s range of no added sugar Cordal. Absolutely has my tick of approval for whenever you want Cordial, but you don’t want that sugar load.[00:08:00]
Susannah Sweeney: Hello, this is Susanna Sweeney, the creative producer of The Dream Big Children’s Festival, and you are listening to the Adelaide Show podcast. And I say, be curious. Keep asking questions. Keep your mind open and think about other people as well as yourself. Always
Steve Davis: Michael Ball knows what it’s like when the world catches fire around you. 11 years in military intelligence. Countless disaster zones with disaster relief Australia. And now he’s teaching teenagers how to think like spies through his young adult novels. His latest book drops readers right into Adelaide Oval during a terrorist attack at a pop concert.
And Michael’s joining us here in the Adelaide Show studio where he’s, you know, juggling book launches, school workshops, and probably keeping an eye on things the rest of us never notice. Michael Ball, welcome to Adelaide. Joe, [00:09:00] thanks for having me, Steve. Great to be here. Let’s start with the elephant in the Adelaide Aval, your latest novel, the one that we’ve, we’ve been talking about, Zoey B pathogens and pop stars has terrorist attacking during a pop concert straightaway.
This location, Adelaide Oval raises. Questions for me. So let’s, let’s tease through them one by one. And the first one isn’t necessarily anything to do with you or even Zoe. I always struggle to suspend disbelief when I’m reading fictional watching fiction that’s based in Adelaide or South Australia because I know it.
And so my mind drifts from the story going, hang on, I wonder, is that, um, Greenhill Road there on, oh, I wonder. And so my brain is sort of swerving all over the road, whereas if it’s PLA placed in LA or London, I can just lose myself in there. So [00:10:00] at that level, do you get that? Does that make sense? Are people in LA gonna have that same feeling when they’re reading stuff that’s in their world?
What hap what, what, yeah. Take us into what you think. Or if I just got cultural cringe and I’m struggling with the fact that Adelaide can actually be the epicenter of a major story.
Michael Ball: Yeah, it’s quite interesting. Um, so there’s a great writer named Brandon Sanderson and he said that the more specific you make things, the harder it is to explain.
So for example, if I say to you, uh, what’s harder to explain, um, what a dog looks like or love, what would you think?
Steve Davis: Uh, woo. Well, I guess there are so many different types of dog and if I haven’t seen one that’s gonna struggle, whereas love, you can sort of touch on a feeling that you have of being near someone.
Yeah.
Michael Ball: Bang on. Exactly. Yeah. So if I say, look, our dog walked by, you could think it’s a white dog, a black dog, who knows? But if I say they loved each other, you just know. So if you read the book again, I’ll say [00:11:00] they’re on the M two driving quickly. But I’m not saying the turns that they’re making or specifically the junctions they’re going through.
So that allows people to then place the roads that they know and the buildings that they see in their head as they’re going through in
Steve Davis: the story. Yes. Which I was doing. Hmm. Which I guess I do when it’s in a place. I dunno. I’m building that world. Hmm. So that was a deliberate ploy on your part?
Michael Ball: Uh, yes.
Yes. Kind of. I’ll say yes, uh, and say that I’m meant to do it, but it was reading it through. I then applied one, um, Brandon Sanderson said again, I was like, ah, it’s nice to know that I did pick up something when I listened to his lessons.
Steve Davis: That’s great. Now the other part of it is it’s a terrorist plot and it’s happening here in South Australia.
My suspension disbelief also got a bit wobbly. Because we have lived in a cocoon. I mean, there was the bombing of the NCA office many, many years ago. But apart from that, I’m struggling to recollect anything of that ilk [00:12:00] here. Why here, and there’s another part to this question. I’ll, I’ll load them both and then we can tease them through.
Sure. As we’ll get to your work in a minute in military intelligence, when you, you know, scanning the rest of the world, are there lots of places where these things happen, where people similarly thought it’s never going to happen here. So I, I want to dive into our naivety and anything specific that led to Adelaide and Adelaide Oval.
Michael Ball: Yeah, so there’s, there’s two reasons why it’s Adelaide. Okay. Um, one is because I’m here. Mm-hmm. And it’s a lot easier to write about somewhere you can see and drive around than somewhere you have to imagine, which I learned to write in the second book. Um, and Yes. Which is in Japan, isn’t it? Yeah, it’s in Japan.
Comes out in February next year. Okay. Um, but the main reason I did Adelaide is, and this is something that most Adelaide don’t know, uh, it is a hotbed of intelligence and spies. Yes. What? Yeah, so you’ve got military intelligence [00:13:00] units, you’ve got, uh, intelligence research places, you’ve got bleeding edge technology.
In Adelaide and where you’ve got international or national secrets, you have people that want to exploit them and spies these days, they’re not James Bond. They’re not running in with a gun knocking down doors and shooting people. No. If you’re doing that, something’s gone horribly wrong. Mm-hmm. So it’s more like the accountants or the IT managers that are working in these places can they siphon off data and get it out to other people?
So you’ve probably met a spy and you don’t know. Isn’t that amazing? How do you know I’m not one?
Steve Davis: Uh, because we’re
Michael Ball: talking right now,
Steve Davis: like, oh, because if I was one, I would be doing this without you knowing
Michael Ball: more along the lines. If you were a spy, you wouldn’t be asking people what spies do because that then raises questions about yourself.
Wow, okay. Unless I’m, do
Steve Davis: you doing that double trick? This is the, the amazing part of that world. And I blame, you know, writers [00:14:00] like John La et cetera, for, for planting these seeds. But why? Okay, I get that. ’cause there’s a subterranean level and I remember in the early days with Adelaide show, we did a two part special on Don Dunton and his history.
Mm-hmm. And there certainly was at the beginning of the Cold War, a a, an increased awareness of Russian spies, looking to people in intelligence realm who were homosexual so that they could get. Um, blackmail material on them to, to try and leverage that to get secret. So I guess it has been part of our fabric for a long time, but there’s so much that’s built around that now you, we really are the epicenter.
Are we? Or one of the epicenters?
Michael Ball: One of the epicenters. And I, I’d say that it, it’s probably one of the more interesting places to be because it’s not thought of as the main hub, if that makes sense. Yeah. It is a hub, but not the main hub. Um, so yeah, it’s, it’s almost like having, you’re [00:15:00] familiar with Harry Potter, I assume?
Yes. Uh, when Harry first goes into the leaky cauldron and then gets taken down to Dagon Alley, there’s a whole new world and you can see all these different things. Now, once you’ve been trained in the intelligence sphere, you kind of walk out and you notice, like, I notice antennas a lot, um, you know, different ways that things are set up.
It’s, it’s quite interesting how you view the world.
Steve Davis: And yet, Sydney, Melbourne, they would’ve, uh. Required less work on your part as an author? ’cause more people are already aware. You, do you have to build Adelaide more for a wider readership or is it just like, it doesn’t really matter. It’s a, it’s a town.
It’s a city. I feel
Michael Ball: like I didn’t have to build it that much. I used the Adelaide Oval because that Sir Donald Bradman statue is like stuck in my head. Okay. Um, and I went, well let, let’s put that in there somewhere. And then that’s where that came about. Um, but yeah, I absolutely said it in Adelaide initially just because I’m [00:16:00] here.
I know that people dunno this about Adelaide and uh, why not give it a bit more of a spotlight? Right. There’s a lot of interesting things in Adelaide. Yes. Although people working in trade
Steve Davis: craft would not want a spotlight.
Michael Ball: Yeah. I guess it depends what you’re trying to do.
Steve Davis: True. Now, before we meet Zoe in more detail, I’ve gotta get these, this, these are this other line of questioning outta my head.
Mm-hmm. ’cause it’s fascinating. Nigel Dobson, who used to be a co-presenter of the Adelaide Show worked in. Uh, intelligence, uh, uh, and he told me a few things that I’m sure were totally sanitized because there wasn’t really anything to it. He would just dangle bits in front of me. But that was it. I mean, he’d take, as I expect you would clearance all these things.
Totally. Seriously. So there’s this, you can tell there’s a ally sealed aspect of of his being. But with you coming on and looking at, now, tell me if my, my own spying has been correct with your, um, decade or so in military intelligence. A [00:17:00] lot of that was RAAF based. Yes. One little footnote. A number of years ago, there was a mess in.
At the Edinburg base. Mm-hmm. Which, if you, if people don’t realize that’s where, uh, you, you might even explain it, it’s where off everyone needs to be on base to have a night of feasting and celebration. Is that it? Or
Michael Ball: what’s a mess in? So we call it a mess night, and it’s when a, it’s, it’s when the unit gets together and basically it’s, it’s a traditional meal and there’s lots of things that you like passing of the port and specific, uh, times where you stand up and talk.
It takes you back to like the old times when they used to do it fairly regularly.
TAS Theme: Yeah.
Michael Ball: Um, it’s, it’s a dying tradition now. Uh. Just because of the way the alcohol and things are being viewed by society and the Defense force is the end of the day. It’s a creation of the society. Um, so it is dying out a bit, but yes, we, we do still have them.
Well, I was the after dinner
Steve Davis: speaker. Yeah. Right at one of these, and I [00:18:00] had a 20 page protocol booklet to read before I attended. That sounds about right. Including how to pass the port, but also, um, how to conduct yourself, how to dress yourself, all those sorts of things. Is that just o is that becoming, is.
An artifact of the past or is there something about that? Because I’ll just before you answer something that I’m working with at the moment that my colleague and I in my day job have worked through is, uh, Stanley McChrystal, general Stanley McChrystal has written a fantastic book on, on character. And one of the things he talks about is how you do one thing is how you do everything, which is that whole making your bed, et cetera, which you hear from people, you know, a veteran background because it’s not about making the bed, it’s about how you apply to everything.
Is that part of, do, do we see this, this protocol as an important part of that lifestyle? Because it reaches
Michael Ball: into everything you do. It’s what you’re talking about is attention to [00:19:00] detail and discipline. Yeah. And those two things are absolutely crucial in the field. Um. I did see a lot of it dying out as I was leaving.
And it’s quite interesting because the type of people that we were getting because of that was different. Um, not, not the caliber, like they’re still the same type of people that we would hire, but the way they thought was different. And it’s quite interesting because in Intel you are the enemy forces representative In the room, you are trying to tell the commander all the things that the, the enemy would do.
Mm-hmm. And you are trying to give decision superiority to your side. And because of that, you can’t always follow what everybody wants it to do. So it’s interesting from an intelligence perspective because we’re getting kind of more free-willed, but at the same time I see a degradation of resilience.
And resilience is at the end of the day, doing hard stuff and continuing to do hard [00:20:00] stuff and doing things you don’t like to do. And. It’s a lot of people say if you break, you’re not resilient, and I disagree with that. Um, you cannot climb Mount Everest without climbing all the other hills and mountains beforehand.
Okay. And removing things like drill, removing things like dress standards, removing these traditions and things like that are actually chipping away at the resilience model that’s been there for decades and decades and like hundreds of years. I will also say, however, there is probably too much and we could get rid of certain aspects, but trying to say that we should be resilient and then removing the things that actually give us the ability to be resilient and grow discipline is a bit of an oxymoron.
Steve Davis: Yes. So just winding a couple of those things back, your role as the intel officer in the room is similar to what they used to have and they, and they may still do at Vatican City with the Pope, they have the devil’s advocate who sits in the room to argue. The on behalf of the, the, the opposite side. [00:21:00] It’s almost like we, yes, it’s, it’s like you sit there as if you are the Taliban or whomever it might be to give us insight into how you are thinking.
And it reminds me of a really bad game of risk. I played once with my best friends, where I took on the role of, uh, Arafat. I, I, and I started doing deals with people and the moment that I could get by without them, I would wipe them off the board and did not ruthless. It was ruthless and I felt dirty afterwards.
I really did. But. Not everyone follows the rules of law in the way they engage. And you are, you were there to be that insight to give us that short, the a, being able to flip to the back to the answers.
Michael Ball: Mm-hmm. So, uh, just a quick correction. Yes. ’cause there is a big difference between them as an analyst, not an officer.
Okay. But as a sergeant, ran a team of analysts. So the officers are more like your managerial [00:22:00] side, uh, manage the people and like the overview and the analysts do the mission. So yes, we were still briefing them, um, playing devil’s advocate, like you say, but also you’ve got groups of experts and like, say signals, which is what I was, so radars, technical signals, code breaking, that sort of stuff.
And then you had like, uh, geospatial analysts, you have linguists, you’ve got missile experts, all sorts, right? You bring it all together and you have to then work as a team. And then generally one of you is the mouthpiece. And so you come out. And you say, these are the capabilities, these are the things they’re trying to defend.
Um, and then you identify things like, are you familiar with the term center of gravity? No, not in this situation. I mean, yes, it as a, I have a center of gravity where I will tip over. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Kind of. So a center of gravity is something that when remove, um, will destroy a military. So say like fuel is always a good example.
Um, because if you don’t have fuel, you’ve got no planes that fly, no boats that [00:23:00] sail, no. Um, troop transport that go anywhere. Gotcha. So if you can identify the center of gravity around anything that you’re trying to do, if it’s like a small region, you say the center of gravity could be, I know the, well, you know, we need to defend the, well that you lose the, well then we lose that town.
Or if it’s, or a big bridge across a peninsula, that is vital. Yeah, exactly. You know, think like the, um, uh, the Gibraltar Strait. Yes. Things like that. Yes. Very important. Um, and then you can go for like an operational point of view where you’ve got a big country and you think, okay, um, is it maybe the person in charge?
Are they the center of gravity or is it potentially. You, you can always say it’s the people, but if you have to get rid of all of the people you haven’t really won. Um, so yes. Yes, exactly. It, it’s important to identify that center of gravity. ’cause then you can act as the enemy and you, it’s the only job where I’ve ever seen somebody use empathy as a weapon.
’cause you have to think like the person that you’re trying to, um, well, in most cases stop. [00:24:00] We’ll use that word. Yes. Um, and it’s, it’s a bit of a, it, it twists your brain sometimes. ’cause you’re trying to think what’s really important to this. And then you start to feel for them as well. And I remember keenly this, this like changed my entire career at this moment is, uh, we knew there was a group that was going to ambush one of our people, one of our teams.
And I was like, all right, well let’s go strike ’em. And the flight sergeant said no. I was like, what do, why they’re gonna shoot at said, that’s a bad thing. We can bomb ’em. He’s like, no, because that’s all of the villages. Uh, from the town and ISIS is holding all the women and children hostage. If they don’t attack us, then they’re gonna kill them all.
And so I went from going right, strike the people that are gonna shoot us to going, whoa, okay. So it’s, it’s a really complex scenario. And in that moment it kind of flipped my head completely as to what war was. And so now I think of [00:25:00] when someone’s going to attack, say, attack a patrolman, okay, well what’s that person thinking?
What’s the person holding the gun? Thinking, where have they been that day? You know, like, uh, do they, have they been fed? Have they got water? How far have they come? Um, if they’ve come, you know, multiple days travel, they probably don’t have much ammunition, things like this. And then you can kind of go back a little bit and say, well, where did they come from?
And that’s where you get to the point of, well, they were sent by isis, so. It’s just drilling back and asking why reverse engineering. Absolutely. And I actually teach, um, a bit of leadership for, for teens for that whole concept of center of gravity and reverse engineering. I
Steve Davis: see the link now with the novel that I, I have read in trying to, I won’t give anything away.
Well, you know, you still gotta read it. Um, but let’s say there is a bully in trying to reverse engineer what led them to be where they are. It’s exactly what you’ve just demonstrated. Yeah. Empathy’s a weapon. [00:26:00] Isn’t that amazing? Um, I am intrigued and you’ve blogged about this, um. Because I’m a huge James Bond fan.
I love James Bond, uh, as ridiculous as it is.
Michael Ball: Um, do you like James Bond at all? I’ve actually never seen a single James Bond or read any of the books. I’m a really bad spy author.
Steve Davis: Well, um, they always end up with the bad guys there being blown to Smither Marines. And I love this comment you make that when there’s a huge car chase or a big explosion, something’s gone wrong.
He might explain, well, that was their center of gravity, so I just took it out. See how quickly I pick this. Um, what do you mean by is, is it because you really just wanna work in the shadows and have the knowledge so that then your people can do what they need to do?
Michael Ball: Armed with some foresight? So there’s generally three state or three levels, right?
Mm-hmm. There’s what, you know, the enemy knows about you, right? Yes. So they know where our bases are, for [00:27:00] example, because they’re put up all over the internet and they’re. They’re really big so you can see them from space. Yeah. Um, then you’ve got the next stage of what we think they know about us, and that will be a certain classification.
You know, say we are an exposed place up there, we know that we’ve sent X amount of, you know, whatever up there. Maybe they know about that. And then you’ve got the third stage, which is all the stuff we really hope they don’t know about hope. Yeah. Yeah. So if, if you, on a frequent basis penetrate into an area and then leave in a big car chase with things blowing up behind you, you get very, very good at physical security and checks get harder and harder and harder.
So it’s like developing bullets and then developing bigger and bigger, you know, bulletproof vests. Yeah. So the more times that happens, the more suspicious you get, the less able you are to get into places because you’re. They’re aware of you. Yes. They can spot you
Steve Davis: coming. They can plan for it.
Michael Ball: Exactly. Or it just gets a lot [00:28:00] harder to get in, in general.
They go, right, well we are gonna have this 100 trusted people and that’s it. Nobody else comes in, for example. And then, well, anyone else that’s new is instantly suspicious. Of
Steve Davis: course. Yeah. ’cause it always, uh, amazes me when you’ve got S-A-S-A-S guys who go off in the middle of a desert for somewhere, they’ve gotta survive and they’ve gotta blend.
That is like the pinnacle of challenge it seems to me. Yeah. I mean, when it’s in the field compared
Michael Ball: to
Steve Davis: this.
Michael Ball: Oh, for sure. And I’ve, I’ve actually at Disaster Relief Australia, I’ve met more, um, more special forces people than I met in my entire career. Um, they’re a different breed of human, and I’d say that the one thing that they all have in common is the inability to give up.
Yes. Like they just don’t quit.
Steve Davis: Well, interestingly, that’s what General Stanley McChrystal says in his book. He said, we go through all this training for their version, their special forces. Mm-hmm. And it’s a pretty grueling X number of week challenges that we’re not trying to, [00:29:00] there’s nothing overly special.
Mm-hmm. It’s, we’re trying to see who will give up and who won’t. He, he, there’s some huge figure of people who try it, who are not rejected. They reject themselves. They give up. Yes. And so here’s that resilience just coming back again, it’s, we’re just trying to find the ones who go. Mm-hmm. Ev. Energizer Bunny.
Michael Ball: Yeah. Well, there’s actually a fantastic book called Grit and it’s written by Angela Duckworth. Mm-hmm. And she’s the reason that in any of those tests that you filled out, they go, when I start a project, I always finish it. And questions like that. She was brought on because, and I, is it Middle Point something point?
It’s the, the Officer School for America. Mm-hmm. Not West Point or Any West Point. That’s the one. Thank you. Um, and they were finding that like elite, uh, athletes that came there, uh, they were finding smartest people in the room that came there. Like all these geniuses and really fit. People quit in day one, and sometimes they would get through.
Other times they wouldn’t, [00:30:00] and they just couldn’t figure out why. And she broke down. Uh, all of the backgrounds of everybody and found out that actually doing extracurricular activities for longer than two years was the indicator of grit. And she was saying that it wasn’t their smartness and it wasn’t their fitness, it was their willingness to tolerate, uh, inconvenience, pain and just general hardship.
And so every person that’s got a, a recreational activity, say basketball or even painting or something, you’ve usually eked out all of the easy wins by two years. If you continue to go on after that. It requires effort, study, lots of practice to then continue to move up in skill. And she said that is what builds resilience.
How
Steve Davis: interesting. ’cause the Adelaide shows in its 12th year.
Michael Ball: Yeah. Well there you go. You last forever. So that
Steve Davis: means, what did you say? I’m not necessarily gifted or fit, I just persevere. Just tough. Well that’s good. Uh, I wanna come back also to Smiley. He’s one of the [00:31:00] characters in the Tinker Taylor Soldier spy stories.
Um, very much the way you talk about it, I, I saw some of his old, the old TV shows are, are on, it’s very much people in cardigans doing office based procedural work and checking telexes and telegrams and, and letter drops, et cetera. Is that, I’m getting the impression that might be closer to the reality when you are in the field doing the pointy end of this sort of work than, than your bonds, et cetera.
Michael Ball: So there was a great, uh, statement made by the head of. Asis. Mm-hmm. That’s the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, our version of CIA. Yep. And he said it’s getting harder and harder and harder to find people willing to spy, um, because of the digital world. And you no longer have to have like this clean record.
You have to also have. Like be a realistic person on Facebook and social media and stuff. Like, I, I didn’t [00:32:00] have social media the entire time I was in, so if I then decided to go, you know, overseas as a super secret spy, uh, I would stand out like you wouldn’t believe. ’cause they’d just go, all right, where’s his, where’s his Facebook?
Where’s his MySpace? Or whatever it is. And I wouldn’t, you know, be found anywhere. And they go, well, that’s suspicious. Let’s keep an eye on that guy. So it’s, it’s quite interesting. Wow. Yeah. So you’re looking for the most normal person you can find to go and do normal things in a country that you, that you want to get not normal things
Steve Davis: from.
And it, and the red flag for you is you said, well, I don’t even have my space. I mean that for crying out loud, that’s 15 years in the past now. Today,
Michael Ball: yeah. I, it’s actually made being an author very difficult. I’m learning Instagram as we go. Uh, apparently that’s the old one now. And I should be on. TikTok TikTok.
Yes. And I think something else is coming eventually. It’s just, yeah, I’m, I’m back in the, in the stone age.
Steve Davis: Well, I was actually gonna ask because of the, the proliferation of these social tools. I forget the, I forget how to describe [00:33:00] this now, but the amount of information that we get one day, uh, a person living in medieval times wouldn’t touch that in a lifetime.
And again, smiley, these old style spies, there’s a way where they could be on top of all the information. Mm-hmm. There is volumes of it. How does that make the role of intelligence these days easier or harder? Because the sheer volume and now we’ve got AI being able to generate plastic content to really muddy the waters.
I, I’m, I dunno. Or is volume what works well for algorithms to look for patterns, which is something you guys do in Intel, uh, easier.
Michael Ball: So it makes it different. So I actually noticed the change happening as I was leaving. Um, so I spent four years training, um, people coming in.
TAS Theme: Mm-hmm.
Michael Ball: And, uh, it was very interesting to see that we moved from being that, you know, crusty [00:34:00] sergeant that knew.
Every single, I don’t know, like radio frequency of a certain country to, um, go off and do a brief and then, you know, get asked a question, give them information, come back to the, now the corporals and the, the new kind of sergeants going in there and they’re saying, Hey, so what’s the RF for? Whatever. And we’d say, I don’t know, I’ll get back to you afterwards.
And then within five minutes we go check the database and give them the information. And because of that, we were actually finding that the old crusty sergeants hadn’t kept on top of that and said they were giving out potentially sometimes the wrong information or any partial bits. So we’re getting much, much better at searching now because the older generation, and I say older, but it’s only like five years older than you know where we are now.
TAS Theme: Yeah.
Michael Ball: Um. They’ve, they’ve got one set of databases they like to use. Like me, I like to use my Facebook and Instagram, ’cause I’m roughly familiar with that. Haven’t even dipped a toe in TikTok. Yeah. And it’s the same for Intel with now we’re using things to go and search [00:35:00] for us. We’re getting much better at creating ways to find information rather than just remembering it all.
And because of that might be a tad slower, but it’s way better information.
TAS Theme: Yeah.
Michael Ball: And it’s actually happening in schools too. So if you look at it as like rote learning and things like that, yes you can get the answers, um, but you’re not necessarily going to understand it and it gets pretty useless later on.
But if you’re showing people, yes, uh, these are the tools that we can use, I still want you to do it by hand so you understand it. But you can then use the tools later on to do exams and things. You’re going to get a much better product. Um. Take chat. GPT, right? This is a very, mm-hmm. What’s the word?
Contentious one. Yep. Um, my friend, he’s um, a hacker and he put this the best way that I’d ever heard it. He goes, it, it’s a multiplier. If you are level one and you use it, it’ll give you level 10 product, which is fantastic instant upskill. But if you then only use chat GPT the whole time, you’re capped at level [00:36:00] 10.
But if you continue to train yourself on the outside and use it like a tool, you then go up to level two and now it’s level 20, level three, level 30. And it will create that skill jump and that capacity jump. And so I think if we don’t lean too heavily on our tools, if we still know how to use that hand saw instead of the electric saw, we will continue to improve.
But if we continue to just lean on the tools and not understand why we’re going to slide backwards.
Steve Davis: That just matches a hundred percent with my intuitions. In fact, our next episode is going to be me reflecting on ai. ’cause I use it all the time. I see all the, ’cause I’ve been marketing as my day job. I see all the snake oil merchants selling everything left, right, and center.
I see it tapping into laziness and that is not good because we’ve evolved for our brain to be off as much as possible and this just helps that be the case. So I hear what you say and I, I, I really think that is. A great understanding from the [00:37:00] use of AI and the tools, but keeping it in the school thing.
The thing that always struggles with me, I love a little bit of rote learning. ’cause being able to quote some Shakespeare, you know, for I’m in so far in blood that sin will pluck on sin. You know, all those things are beautiful fragments. It’s not gonna be the end of it. But being able to know that seven, eight, or 56 and have that as a core.
The reason why I find it hard to have that prized out of my dead cold hands is that even when I’m using a calculator or chat, GPT or Siri, if I’ve got a rough idea of where the answer should be and what it will kind of look like, it gives me that extra layer of oversight of the tools. So it’s getting that balance right to know how to do it.
Mm-hmm. And not just trust them blindly. ’cause these I tools hallucinate.
Michael Ball: Yeah, that’s true. And I suppose knowing what your end game is [00:38:00] is like, well, it’s what we’re starting with the end in mind, right? So if you understand the basis, then you should be able to predict the future. But, uh, I will say as far as thinking goes, yes.
Um, there’s also many different types of thinking in many different ways. People process information. Like for me, I’ve got no internal monologue, and I think it’s insane that people have a person in their head that they talk to. I also can’t picture anything in my head, and so my wife just looks at me and says, how do you think?
Um, and I answer, I don’t know. Um, but when I write, it’s literally like an entire movie plays and I just write down what I see and I can replay it over and over again. You could delete my whole book and I could write the whole thing almost exactly the same, not from rote, but because I understand it. And so.
I think we need to cater for people that do have that type of brain, because if you give me rote, I will fail. I didn’t finish year 12, you know, I crumped out at school. I’ve tried uni, hated it. So gave up on there. [00:39:00] Um, now I’m a cyber expert at Disaster Relief Australia, and I’ve written a book, right? So it’s, it’s an interesting little thing that we have trying to get everyone onto kind of the same page and to an extent we do need to be able to do it, but I think we also can’t be too rigid in that thinking because there are very, very different minds out there.
Steve Davis: And we get robbed if we do that because we had Chest Osborne from Berg on, I think last episode or one before. He makes that strong argument. We wouldn’t have someone like him if we would try to put all our square pegs only in square holes. That’s interesting. Um, you’d be happy to know. We’re almost getting to Zoe.
We’ve got a couple last questions and there’s one question I’m gonna ask you that you may well not want to answer. It’s the only one, the whole interview. Are you ready? I’m excited for that one. Okay. And it is taking a geopolitical look. We’ve got a thing called the Five Eyes. Whi, which is, uh, intelligence sharing between, lemme get this right, Australia, New Zealand, uk, US and Canada, [00:40:00] US has gone potty with its current leadership.
We’ve got people in their defense using publicly available communication means that journalists have been accidentally added onto. Do you sense, and you don’t know this probably, but do you sense that it’s four eyes at the moment and they maybe have a sanitized version to the us? I mean, this is something that shatters the foundation of everything we think is on the good side of the ledger.
We never anticipated the US to go wobbly.
Michael Ball: Hmm. It’s, it’s really quite interesting. Right. So I’ve been out from 2023 and, sorry, I’ve been out means, uh, I’ve been discharged since 2023. Yeah. So I’ve been watching it all unfold and I just look at it as it’s, it’s all strange to me and I don’t really understand it, but at the end of the day.
Uh, there are systems and, you know, frameworks and things that are set up, and there’s a lot of stuff that is automated [00:41:00] and I do not think that we have been, uh, inconvenienced or that we are suffering any kind of, um, backsliding capability from the government at the time in the us. And the reason is that the Five Eyes community.
You know, we’ve gone to water to war together. Mm-hmm. Multiple times. And because of that, there are links that are deep and it would require a lot to actually break through. And so you might have your spats, you might have moments where you’re incredibly close together, but at the end of the day, um, there is still a fundamental layer of information sharing in capability that we are all tied together.
And because of that, I, I don’t really think we’ve been impacted that much.
Steve Davis: Yeah. What’s getting me is when there are adults in control, all is good. And I can imagine those deep ties are there from maybe not exactly the top, ’cause those people have been shunted around. But [00:42:00] that everything from there down, down to the ground deep.
But, you know, you talked about that third area with stuff that we hope the enemy doesn’t know. It’s when you’ve got silliness happening at the top and loose usage of social tools that only needs to get exposed once. And it’s gone. That’s the bit I am
Michael Ball: not even on purpose. Yeah. Well, it’s funny you say that, like our prime ministers have accidentally done things, and I won’t say which ones, and I won’t say what they said, but there have been, um, from our side that, uh, things have been leaked.
Okay. Uh, there’s been things from the uk like every now and again, a secret crops up because it’s very hard to keep everything in your brain and then remember what classification everything is, right? And it’s in those moments where you, you know, give someone like a quip or, you know, try to be witty. It like bypasses that part of your brain, that’s the wall, but the firewall and something will come out.
So I, I don’t think, [00:43:00] no, I don’t, I really don’t think that there’d be too much information that has gone. Um, but what I will say is. Like I, I look at the US in general and there’s, there is a big uproar about Donald Trump because of the things he’s doing that are against general Australians views. Mm-hmm.
But if you look at all the tools that he has, and you look at the way that he’s been using the power, he is actually not doing anything that the other presidents haven’t done beforehand. And he is using the executive orders. He, uh, is using the same levers that felt like Obama could be Obama, um, was the first president to strike another country without getting permission from Congress.
Right? Right. So when Donald Trump dropped a bomb in Iran, he wasn’t the first person to do that. And it was actually the other political party that had done it first. So I look at it, he’s a symptom, right? Yeah. Uh, he’s a particularly bad symptom in my point of view. Um, but it’s not. It’s not he who has [00:44:00] created it, he’s using a system that’s already there.
And Biden had the ability to come in after him and change all those things, but they didn’t. ’cause you know, he goes, well, I’ll be able to use these for good. And so here we are again in Trump 2.0. Okay. And he’s still got the same tools. So I’m, I’m looking at it and I’m going, well, at a deep part of the American psyche, they want these types of tools and this is the kind of government you
Steve Davis: get.
Okay. I appreciate, that’s a fascinating insight. Thank you for that. Uh, last month I was at the Australian Signals Director here in Adelaide.
Michael Ball: Yeah, right. So they have
Steve Davis: finally set it up. Good. Uh, so say that again? I said, so they have finally set it up. That’s good. Yes. Yeah. Um, however, I didn’t get all the way into the inner sanctum.
Yeah. You’ll be, you’ll be not shocked at all to understand. No. Uh, we went for a cybersecurity briefing, uh, and it was absolutely fascinating. The woman who was talking to us, whose name I’m not allowed to reveal, um, she, I asked a question. We, they’re the cutting, they’re at the pointy edge of [00:45:00] making sure that these cyber criminals are understood, kept at bay.
And any businesses or even individuals who get attacked by them have some degree of support when they clock off and they leave this beautiful, secure, lovely place in the center of Adelaide and they go home. I said, are you trained to look out for being tailed? I mean, because you are valuable. And she kind of glossed over that.
Now you are here. That sure has to happen. ’cause yes, you have a shift that you clock on and clock off of, but the bad people don’t clock on and clock off.
Michael Ball: It’s, it’s actually really interesting. So, um. So there, there’s a lot of stress in Intel. Um, and this is kind of the darkest side of it, but someone I knew, uh, would kill themselves every two years.
Oh, that’s the average I would hear of someone that killed themselves about every six months. [00:46:00] Um, and there’s a lot of stress there. And it’s from that unique situation where you can walk into work, uh, contribute to a war, see horrific things, and then go home and cuddle your child, or, and they, they ran a bit of research in something called distributed ground station.
America, I can’t remember which one it was. Um, and they’re people that have feeds coming in from all over the world. They’re contributing to missions and they go home. Um, and they found things like having, you know, a picture of your kid on your desk, you know, so that you can kind of like look and remember your kid is really bad.
If you’ve just struck a, a truck and it’s got kids in it, you know, and you’re like, that was, that was the wrong truck kind of a thing. Boom. Suddenly you’re picturing it’s your child. So the stress is immense and because of that, you are always wired. Um, that, that whole sleep with one ear open kind of a thing.
Yeah. So the whole follow your home thing, again, that speaks to kind of the. [00:47:00] The bond. Yeah. I was, you know, driving and stuff like that because if, if someone was to capture an intelligence person, then well, they don’t rock up for work the next day. That’s a problem.
TAS Theme: Yeah.
Michael Ball: Um, it does worry me. ’cause I’m like, well, grab a veteran then, right?
Yeah. Because they, no one’s waiting for them to walk onto base. Um, please don’t do that by the way. Um, but yeah, it is always in, in your head that you, you know, you know things and you know that other people know, you know things. And it can even be just as, as vague as like someone on Facebook sends you a Facebook request.
You say no, but your friends says yes. And if you are friends with all the other people in your unit, then suddenly you’ve just gained access and you find out who all the different people are. Then maybe you can just like sit outside and go, oh, yep, that’s that person. That’s the car number. And that’s where we’ve got the saying of aggregation, of information increases, classification.
So you start to, yeah, all the shins, you start to add up the little pieces and then suddenly you’ve got a big map and you can see [00:48:00] who everybody is. And it’s all, again, just working backwards, you know? Yes. It’s, if you can think backwards, you can do intel.
Steve Davis: Isn’t that fascinating? ’cause the other side of that coin, and this comes back to our, that Don Dunson reference earlier, is family as a way to get to people.
Mm. It is just a special, it really is a call to service to do this, because there’s a lot that’s on the
Michael Ball: Yeah. And, uh, so I don’t talk about it heaps, but like, um, pretty much everyone that I know that discharged, discharged medically due to PTSD, um, I’ve discharged due to PTSD too, and. You know, it is these stresses, right?
And it’s not, it’s not waking up at night sweaty and screaming as your heart’s pounding about, you know, some mission you’re on. That, that does happen to people. It’s more like I had a, uh, pretty severe mental episode between December and probably March this year, sorry, December last [00:49:00] year, March this year.
And it was all physical, like my hands were shaking. Um, I was tired all the time. I was very irritable. And I’m like, what is going on? And then went to a psych, they’re like, you got PTSD. This is how we start treating it. And there’s things you can do that actually like rewire your brain. And this is what we’re talking about, like with the stress.
’cause like, if you are always worried about something happening to you or your family, you are hyper aware when you’re trying to sleep. You’re listening to all the locks. You listening for the locks. Sorry. Yeah. You, um. React to like a, a glass breaking or something that your kid drops. You know, you’ve gone straight into fight or flight and you realize it’s your kid and maybe you, you blow up because it’s, the energy is released from your body.
It’s kind of a relief, but you’re in a fight mode. And so it comes out as anger. So it’s, it’s a, it’s a very stressful, uh, very complicated thing. And you know, I think it’s a not understood when you get in there and it’s [00:50:00] only just being understood now because of the, the sheer amount of people that have, well, that have killed themselves, but also who just are leaving with massive psych problems now.
Steve Davis: And we do know, I’ve just finished reading a book called, it Didn’t Start With You, which is, I forget the author’s name. Uh, if I remember, I’ll put the link in the show notes. Uh, they’ve tracked the. Research into trauma and how it is actually remembered in your body and passed on through your DNA for about three generations.
Wow. So, uh, systems psychologists are the ones who really nailed this because they see us all as part of a system. We are not just me, we are in a marriage relationship or some sort of relations board, not school work. Every, we’re all connected. Even people have done bad stuff to us. They’re in our family tree and this, this book is just amazing in, again, working backwards.
And I sat down, I, I’ve been talking to a, a system psychologist and the moment she gets you to a [00:51:00] family tree, you go, oh my goodness. I can see it all. I can see it all. It is totally fascinating. And what you’ve just said to me is then something that I’m thinking, wow, well then that is now going to be in, in your family for a bit, but being aware of it is the key.
Michael Ball: Yeah.
Steve Davis: Being upfront and aware of it.
Michael Ball: Yeah. I think that’s one stage. But you also need interventions. ’cause I think of, you know, disadvantaged students, um, like I, it breaks my heart to hear these things, but there was one student that wasn’t coming to school because their car was broken, you know? And, you know, it’s like, well fix the car.
Well, they don’t have the money. Well, to me that’s, I have always had, you know, meals on the table, all that sort of stuff. I find out that, you know, food isn’t even a normal thing for some of these disadvantaged students. And I go, oh, and it kind of like. It broke my world belief that, you know, oh, well we all get education, we all start on the same foot.
No, that’s wrong. Like not everyone, um, has two parents together. Not everyone has food coming in all the time. [00:52:00] Not everyone has a reliable income. Not everyone has transport. And if you are from, you know, a series or like intergenerational trauma, that’s probably been true of your family for many generations.
Yeah. So how do you break out? And that’s where you need those focused interventions.
Steve Davis: Yeah. And that’s why the people like these systems psychologists say, look, yes, you might have a child in trouble, but didn’t start with them.
Michael Ball: Yeah,
Steve Davis: absolutely. You know, they’re not alone. Yeah. Uh, on that PTSD particularly, there was a big cyber issue at work that brought things to a head for you, but it’s what led to writing the book about
TAS Theme: Yeah.
Steve Davis: Good. Can come from it. Yes. So, first of all. Did someone suggest writing a book would be a great way to deal with this absolute overload tsunami of stress? Or did it just somehow come out of your head that this is how I’m going to work it outta my system? Or is there some other explanation?
Michael Ball: Yeah, so I’d been playing at writing for a [00:53:00] few years.
I’d been trying to write this fantasy book, and I kept showing it to, to people and they’re like, oh, you know, you’re, you’re actually pretty bad. And I’m like, that’s fair. ’cause it was your sister, uh, apparently was a harsh critic. Yes. Uh, but she has been the greatest tool in my toolbox. Okay. Absolutely. Um, so to everyone out there, find your harshest critic and then get them on side.
TAS Theme: Yep.
Michael Ball: Um, so the, the way the book came about is, um, my wife said to me, uh, ’cause I, I’d finished the, the fantasy book and I was like, oh, I’m gonna have to rewrite this. It’s that bad. I don’t want to do that. And she goes, you always give up. I was like, what? Oh, she goes, no. It’s true. If you’re good at something, you do it.
And then the moment it gets hard, you give up. And I was like, I do not. And then I thought about everything I’d ever done. I’m a man of many, many useless talents. Um, and I was like, well, maybe she’s right. And so I sat down and I started rewriting that book and I was working through it. And then the whole cyber thing came up and my daughter had been watching Taylor [00:54:00] Swift concert.
She’s only like three years old at that time.
TAS Theme: Yeah.
Michael Ball: And, um, good taste. Yes. I like to think so. Uh, she didn’t become a world phenomenon by accident. Um, and I thought, oh, wouldn’t it be really bad because there’s a inside, there’s a, there’s a bastard in me. I’m sorry, but there is. And I was like, oh, it’d be horrible if someone dropped like a, a bio bomb there.
And that’s where the idea came from. And I was like, oh, that’s actually, that’s pretty spicy. So what, um. What can I do with that? And the idea wouldn’t go away. And it almost didn’t get turned into a book because I had my wife in my head saying, you never finish things. And I was like, no, I have to finish this fantasy one.
But no, it was actually thankfully that because my wife had said that I sat down, I belted out the book, and then I put it through 18 drafts. So that is like 630,000 words. Um, which is just, it’s, it’s awful. And it is really hard because I basically edited it for four months. So I [00:55:00] wrote it in 10 days, edited it for four months.
And if my wife hadn’t said that, and if my sister hadn’t been such a harsh editor, uh. I never would’ve finished the book. And if I had finished the book, it wouldn’t be in good shape. And so I’m so thankful to my wife for calling me, calling me on it, and for my sister for being the most ruthless, uh, editor I’ve ever had, but also my biggest fan, you know, and supporting person.
Steve Davis: It’s so good. This is that systems thinking. Uh, Brett Williams, a mate of mine who’s been on the Adelaide Show before, he called me out on that many, many years ago when I gave up the first time around at uni, he said, you know what? There’s a pattern here. Well, that just puts fire in the engine. I can tell you.
Sure does. Um, so we’ve got, uh, Zoe, and we’ve got this story. When we first meet her, she’s in a pretty extreme situation. Again, I’m not gonna give anything away. Pushing herself to limits, not [00:56:00] stereotypically how I think a teenage girl is going to be spending her day. There you go. I’ve said it, it, but it is stereo.
It is not a stereotype. How wrong am I? Um, tell me. Uh, without giving too much away from every, for everything I, ’cause I want people to read the book. Um, you really opened up almost like a classic James Bond movie where they’re right in the
Michael Ball: action of something. Yeah. So I was always told if you’re gonna start a book, start at exciting ’cause it has to grab someone.
Yeah. Um, but I, I don’t think it’s un stereotypical, is that the word? Mm-hmm. Um, it is a changing world out there and, you know, women can do anything. And when I wrote Zoe, I went, I want this to be a character that my daughter can read when she’s older and want to be like. And so every time I look at something I go.
Would, would my daughter be proud of this? And that’s how I write her. And [00:57:00] so one of the key things about Zoe as well is she’s not some 14-year-old girl that’s round house kicking XSAS dudes. ’cause that just doesn’t happen. I’ve read a lot of books like that. Um, she is a, yeah, to all intents and purposes, right?
Like an an average teenage girl, she doesn’t have exceptional skills. Um, she learns quickly, which is great, but she fails a lot. And the reason that she gets to the end isn’t because she’s super smart or naturally talented or some, you know, kick ass fighter. It’s because she’s smart, she’s resourceful and she’s resilient and she continues through.
Yeah,
Steve Davis: absolutely. Wow. That’s. That nails it. I mean, that’s what it comes up. But we are tapping into, ’cause the other thing that was running through my mind when I first read this is your first, this is your first real series of books that you’ve written, isn’t it? It’s the first published book. Yep. Okay. And you are what, in your thirties?
Yeah, 33. Okay. Don’t let the gray [00:58:00] hair fool you. Okay. And you’ve chosen a 14-year-old girl as the main character you write. That seems like a tough gig. How do you get into the mind of a
Michael Ball: 14-year-old girl? Yeah, I knew you were gonna ask this actually. Um, and funnily enough, I’m writing another series on the side as well, and the protagonist for that is a, is a 16-year-old girl.
So, wow. I think there’s just a teenage girl in me that wants to get out. Yes. Um, but. I, uh, I got the, the feel for Zoey, uh, by listening to two songs on repeat, uh, done by a band called Paramore. Uh, one is Misery Company and the other one is, I’ve forgotten the name. I know what the words are. Um, and they’re like a, a poppy, rocky kind of angsty band.
And it was just, to me, I’m like, that hits teenage girl in my brain. And I literally listened those to those two songs for like 10 hours a day for 10 days as I wrote her. And, [00:59:00] um, so I’m, I’m a very musical person. Yeah. Um, I play a lot of instruments and I sing, um, and I can do a bunch of voices that we won’t do in here, uh, ’cause that’ll get confusing.
But to me, music isn’t just a song. It like, it, it, they paint pictures. They make me feel different ways. And so when I listen to those particular songs, they make me think of, of Zoe.
Steve Davis: How fascinating. And do you think this musical world that you immerse yourself in and express yourself through, is that the compensation for not having that visual inner world and that inner monologue world, do you think?
’cause one of my great colleagues, uh, David Olney is blind. His other senses are off the charts, including his brain. Amazing. And I, I do hear in pop psychology that that’s what happened. You know, you’ve lost one sense or you don’t have something and the body has gone crazy elsewhere.
Michael Ball: I mean, it’s possible.
Never thought of it like that, but it would make sense. [01:00:00] Um, but yeah, like music, music has definitely played a big part. Mm-hmm. It’s like, I, I don’t think many people use music to remember things like when I was studying, I would have certain songs for certain questions and I would remember. And how to answer that by thinking of the song in my head.
Um, and I know that’s funny that I say, I can think of it in my head. I can hear the music, but I can’t hear the words. And I was the lead singer for a band and I wouldn’t know the words until I opened my mouth to sing. And I’ll tell you what that is terrifying. It takes courage. Yeah, well it always comes outright, but it’s, you know, I, I’d have no idea what the words were gonna be and I’d get to the point and then there they’d just tumble outta my mouth and it’d be fine.
What was the band? Uh, we were called custom Free Fall. It was only during high school and we were terrible. Awesome. But it was the time where I had long, curly hair down to like halfway down my back. So if you can find that, uh, my wife would love to see that image. ’cause I’m pretty sure I’ve scrubbed it from the internet.
Steve Davis: And if anyone could, you’re good. [01:01:00] Uh, um, in learning through the Paramore songs and getting here though, what surprised you? In that makeup of a teenage girl that you wouldn’t have anticipated had you not been exposed to that music.
Michael Ball: So it, this is, this is two part answer. I did a leadership course at DRA and one of the things we did is go around the room and present a problem that we didn’t know how to solve.
And other people would, you know, write down how they would do it. And this woman wrote up there, um, at work, I feel like I am unable to talk because this, you know, X year old male, um, disregards my opinion. And I went to write something up there. And then I wrote, I’m not a young woman. And so I actually have no idea how I would solve that because I’m, I’m a man and the ways that I would solve it, you know, don’t come with the actual [01:02:00] problem in that that person’s disregarding the woman.
And I was like, oh, that’s, that’s really interesting. And so. When I was thinking of Zoe, the, the really interesting things I got from her is, okay, so I am, I’m a 14-year-old girl. What lessons has the world taught me already? Um, how do I think of the world? Like there’s a great line in there. I think that she dresses up as a, as a boy and goes to a party with her mom.
Yeah. And she’s finds out that day that not everyone’s treated the same, uh, for instance, that boys are listened to more than girls are. And you know, I think it’s small things like that that really kind of shock me. ’cause I wrote something and I’m like, that doesn’t seem right. And then I think about it for a while and I’m like, oh, it actually probably goes this way.
And so, yeah, I think that worldview of how the world treats women is different to how they treat men. And I think that was quite interesting. I just
Steve Davis: see this, uh, um, oh, I dunno [01:03:00] how to describe, it’s not two sides of the coin, but there is a parallel between you getting inside. Shelby’s mind and you in your intel role, trying to get inside an enemy’s mind.
Michael Ball: Yeah. That we’re good at it. So that’s the job. But yeah, it’s, it’s been incredibly useful for writing characters because you can imagine like, you know, the heat on their skin and like, what are they thinking of you? Oh, I’m hungry. Well, you haven’t eaten for three days. Sure. You are like, yes. Whereas authors generally write down, you know, timelines and things.
I don’t need to because I feel like I’m the person that I’m writing.
Steve Davis: Wow. And I, that hungry thing just surrounded me. When I lived in, I lived in Budapest for a couple of years, and, uh, Alexis, whatever, a long time listeners have a drink, um, uh, and Lotsy, uh, an old bloke used to say whatever you’re feeling.
Not right. Ask yourself, am I tired? Am I hungry? Am I cold? He said they’re the three questions. Ask them first before you go looking for anything else. Yeah. He sounds like a [01:04:00] wise man. Yes. Oh dear. Now Dimmick’s at Mm, well done. They they’ve got a stash of your books for sale there. They sure do. Um, how did that come about?
Well, I mean that’s, that’s, that’s a coup. I mean, DIMM is a proper bookshop.
Michael Ball: Yeah. So it’s Dimmick in Glenelg and in, I think that’s the other one. Right. Um, and so it literally just came down to, I went and talked to them. I said, hi, I would love to be in a bookstore. I’ve written a book that is, you know, uh, a teenage girl doing spice stuff in Adelaide and I’m an Adelaide person.
And they went, you’re a local author writing a book about Adelaide. That’s fantastic. Let’s get you in here. Um, so I will say though, uh, this is the hard part of any kind of, uh, authoring is, uh, no one knows me. Yes. And so they hire in the store and they’re still in the store. So I would love for people to go and buy them or at least shoplift them.
Steve Davis: Do something. Yeah. Just take ’em. Uh, and of course [01:05:00] also available online. And this is the other half of the job, isn’t it? Mm. Half of it’s writing it. The other half is the slog of just building that momentum and getting those connections. Yeah. What’s working best? What’s, ’cause school libraries, you’ve, you’ve made sure they’re in some school libraries.
Michael Ball: Yeah. So it’s actually quite hard to get invited into a school, which I think is a really good thing. Uh, kids should be protected. Um, not from me ’cause I’m not a bad person. But, uh, once I do manage to get to a school, I donate the book immediately. Um, so the, the way I get into schools is, is not by jumping fences and just running into the library.
Um, ’cause that’d be too James Bond. Yeah. Um, blowing up the principal’s car. Yeah. Good grief. Um, so putting bugs in the staff room, maybe like a potato in his, in his exhaust part. I don’t know. Um, but it’s, it’s by offering workshops. And so I do do an art workshop, [01:06:00] which is, um, you know, it is about the book, but the other two are leadership.
Mm. So one teaches, uh, how to fail, how to learn from your failure, and then how to succeed. Um, and the second one was that center of gravity thinking that I was talking to you about. Um. And that one breaks down. Basically everything you want to do in life helps you select the actual three that you want to do, and then you have to actively ignore everything else because they are the only things that will distract you from doing the other three.
And I always use the example of you are never gonna be distracted by quantum, you know, computing, right? Because I’m assuming you have no interest in that. No, I’m not.
Steve Davis: No.
Michael Ball: Right. But you know, if somebody came up and like, Hey, have you played flamenco guitar? It’s really fun. You should get into it. But, you know, maybe learning.
I’ve got a guitar. I did see it. Yeah. Um, maybe, uh, you are focusing more on your jazz instead. So, you know, flamencos not really gonna help you get there. So. But that is now an interest in your brain and it’s a distraction. Mm-hmm. So [01:07:00] showing them how to pick the right goals, how to disregard all the other ones, and then how to create that plan by starting where they want to be, which is that, you know, rock Superstar for example.
And all the things you have to do between there from a forming a band to be actually, you know, maybe going on tour and then booking hotels and having logistics and all that sort of stuff that you just don’t think of, but you have to do eventually. Wow.
Steve Davis: How do teachers, how does the coin drop for teachers to invite you in in the first place?
’cause, uh, that, that’s valuable and that’s, I think one of the, the dark spots, the shadows in our curriculum is that I would put into the real world makes stuff happen category. And yet it’s hard to quantify.
Michael Ball: Yeah. So my mission is to change how the nation thinks, because currently people think of failure as bad and as soon as they fail, they don’t wanna do it again.
So I want people to [01:08:00] fail over and over again. You know, it’s a first attempt in learning, right? Fail and, you know, really get after it and go and go. And so, you know, it, it drives me more than just wanting to sell books and because of that, I’m willing to do things wrong. Um, but the way that I got into the first lot of schools was, um, defense runs something called the Defense School Mentoring Program.
It’s a fantastic initiative where they get, uh, mentors who are people who are either, um, spouses of someone serving or someone who has served. And I’ll just do a shout out here to all the spouses. They do it harder than the actual service people a lot of the time because, you know, we step away and go on mission.
And they just have to pick everything else up. And they normally form all these habits and things, and then we come back and we disrupt it all again. Yeah. And it, it’s probably the hardest job in the world is being a spouse to, you know, a serving member Anyway. So those people, uh, will [01:09:00] then be a mentor to kids that are defense.
So defense kids, they’ll come in, they’ll help them. Uh. I wanted to say assimilate there, but that’s not the right word. Um, integrate back into the school, uh, give them support with, you know, study and all sorts of things like that to really help them come. ’cause a lot of them come at just random times of the year.
How disruptive ’cause the family has
Steve Davis: moved or? Yeah. Yeah.
Michael Ball: So like they posted, your kids are now at this school. Um, I don’t know anyone, you know, I was in the middle of, of week five, like what do I do? Um, helping there, but also my dad’s away. Um, you know, those, that’s, that’s a powerful thing to not have one of your, you know, parents there all the time.
Um, so yeah, they, it’s a fantastic initiative. Really glad it’s out there. And I managed to get invited to their, um, regional meeting, uh, back in term two. Yeah. So, um, I then said, look, this is what I do. These are my workshops. Here’s some books. Take them out. Um, and yeah, my first one. [01:10:00] I wanna say it was Golden Gold.
Golden Grove Primary School got me there. I delivered five workshops. Awesome. Um, and the kids love it. You create chaos. I tell ’em that you’re gonna throw these, I get table tennis balls. I’m like, just hold onto them because we’re gonna chuck them everywhere in a minute. And they just, they just love it. Um, I’ve got, I think it’s Hewitt and Gola District, uh, lined up to do in the next few weeks as well.
Steve Davis: Okay.
Michael Ball: Um, so, you know, that’s, that’s the start. But I do have a very open book and I would love for any teachers to reach out to me. You can do it by my side.
Steve Davis: And is there something that a teacher’s noticing in their class or their school community that says to you, this would be useful?
Michael Ball: I think it’s. I would say it’s useful everywhere and that you don’t need to look for it any further than ask a child why they don’t want to do something.
Because if they don’t wanna do it, it’s usually because A, they’re bad at it [01:11:00] or B, they don’t like it. And if it’s the second one, that’s fine. But if it’s because they’re bad at it, but they do want to do it and they’re just scared of looking silly or you know, they don’t want to be yelled at because they got it wrong again.
Well that needs a redefining of failure. Yeah.
Steve Davis: Without undermining the whole reason for getting you into the school, is there a taste of a step you might take with kids to, to cope with that? Or is that giving away the goods?
Michael Ball: Oh no, it’s um, I mean, I’d walk through the workshop right here, but it’s very visual and kinesthetic.
Like I get people to get up and do things. Um, but I think. Like I teach four different stages of failure. Like the first stage is not setting a goal correctly. You can’t achieve your goal if you dunno what it is. Um, the second one is that, uh, goals change. And that can be internal or external. Like you can just decide you don’t wanna do that anymore and go do something else.
Or the thing you’ve been training for forever has been [01:12:00] canceled because there was a bushfire. Yeah. And then the third one is you get bad advice. ’cause a lot of people ask their parents for help, right? But if you’re trying to run a hundred meters and your one parent’s a chemist, and the other one’s a, well, we’ll go back to quantum physics, right?
Mm-hmm. Chances are they may not be star athletes and they might give you bad advice. So iden, the fourth step is then identifying your team. Um, talking to people who have done it before, finding a mentor, and then working together to achieve the goal.
Steve Davis: Again, systems.
Michael Ball: Yeah. Because a system will support you every time, right?
Yeah. You need a, you need a framework that you can stick to that’s simple. Um, there’s a great general that said, I don’t want the best fighting men, the most complicated tactics. And I want, I just want people to be brilliant at the basics. And if you can make fail, learn, succeed, how you approach every task you’ll succeed.
Steve Davis: Really interesting. ’cause we’re recording this the day [01:13:00] after there was a showdown between Port Adelaide and Adelaide crows and the crows demolished port in terrible rain. Um, but I don’t watch a lot of football. I just happen to watch a bit of this game. The crows just seemed to be sticking to the discipline and that that persistence was there.
They’d overrun the ball and they were immediately turning around to get it. Whereas the port players not as much. Hmm. And it was, if, if ever you want a video to extol some of these virtues, watching that game, especially in the last quarter when everyone’s a bit tired and the crows were way ahead. It was, even though they’re way ahead, it was amazing that stickability
Michael Ball: comes down to drill and that’s the, yeah.
The ability not to think and just to act. Alright.
Steve Davis: Now, as you know, a 17-year-old had a look at the book and it didn’t, she didn’t connect with it. Mm. Young adult fiction. What’s going on? ’cause a lot happens in a person’s life from say, [01:14:00] well all the way through, but 12 to 17, 18, we are going through heaps.
There must be a cliff where we lose some, some people to. Young adult fix it. What’s going on? Can you understand this?
Michael Ball: Yeah. So the, the book that I’d written there is aged for about, I think on the website it’s like 10 to 14. Mm-hmm. Um, but the idea for the series is to mature one year at a time like Harry Potter does.
If you read the first Harry Potter and you read the last Harry Potter, they are drastically different, even just in word count. Um, but there’s a new category that is emerging called New Adult. Oh yeah. It’s the step between like young adult and adult. Because if you, if you read a lot of young adult, usually the character managers to do the thing that they were trying to do, uh, the world ends basically the same as it was, uh.
Hope exists and you know, everything is [01:15:00] good. Whereas when you’re 17, you’ve lived in the world long enough and you’re now starting to understand that it doesn’t matter how much you want something, and it doesn’t matter if you’re a good person. Sometimes bad things just happen. And also, um, that, you know, the best laid plans sometimes fail and also consequences is basically what I’m looking at there.
Like, I would love for somebody to do a psychological analysis on Aragon going out to battle as many times as he did, killing as many orks as he did. I’m like, that guy’s a psychopath if he doesn’t have any kind of problems. So I think what people are, are really trying to feel is a bit of realism. And that’s what I’m aiming to deliver in the Zoe Baird series because it’s, it’s not, she’s just some, you know, wicked agent at the age of 14, or she’s gonna fail, she’s gonna learn things from as early as chapter two in the second book, uh, you are dealing with the consequences from all the stuff that she did in the first.[01:16:00]
So it’s, it’s that, that gritty Yeah. Sticky problem called being responsible for my actions.
Steve Davis: Yeah.
Michael Ball: So that’s
Steve Davis: what 17 year olds want. So she’s gonna be on that journey. And readers a quarter at this age. Mm-hmm. Then she will continue.
Michael Ball: Yeah. And hopefully, um, she will hit those points at the same time that Yeah.
You know, the, the young people reading it hit those points. Like I, my aim is to capture a generation, um, which also, again sounds hostile. I’ve got a very aggressive vocabulary. Uh, look, we, we, we
Steve Davis: give you a pass on that. Uh, although talking vocabulary, pop music, popular music that’s going along parallel in these kids’ lives is so explicit and superficial in its values based now, I kind of think when I grew up it wasn’t quite as bad.
I mean, I can probably cite some examples where it was to be [01:17:00] fair, but it seems like now. Someone who’s 13 is listening to music in which the young 20 something person I is drenched in angst is swearing their heads off, is talking about explicit affairs that must impact the maturing, the aging part of the brain and inject some cynicism, which disrupts this young adult, new adult model a little bit I would think.
Michael Ball: I don’t know. Like, uh, I listened to Eminem when I was younger. Okay. And don’t tell anyone I know. ’cause I swear I was just a metal head. Um, but I did listen to Eminem. I listened to Lincoln Park and they are Oh wow. Fairly angsty.
TAS Theme: Yeah.
Michael Ball: Um, listened to disturbed, uh, you know, as well as a lot of jazz and things, but like, thank goodness, yes.
I, I did have some test. Um, but the. The thing about them all is like, I was just listening to them for [01:18:00] the music and you listen to kids as well, they might actually be rapping along and have no idea really what they’re saying. Yeah. Um. And you’re the second person who’s made that point to me in the life.
Well, because words are simply another part of a scale, right? Like, so if you can feel something from the way that like all the Ds hit mm-hmm. You know, you feel it on your tongue every time you drop it to the beat, that can be something that they’re actually feeling as part of the music, not necessarily the words that are being said.
And I think far more comes from the way that your parents, you know, teach you how to live in the world than will come from, from music. Like my daughter’s four. And she said the, uh, the F word the other day because she’d heard one of the songs I was listening to and I was like, oh, okay darling, you can’t actually say that.
Adults can say it sometimes, but you are not allowed to say it yet. And she went, oh, okay dad. And that was it. You know, so it’s, it’s really how I think the, the people that are listening to it, uh, [01:19:00] interpret it for their kids. Uh,
Steve Davis: yeah. Okay. Good point. I remember the first time my youngest said that she wasn’t that much older, putting her to bed and just came out of her mouth and I was frozen, wanting to laugh my head off, but not wanting to react.
I just say, pardon? And she said it again. Okay. And I said the same sort of thing. There are, there are times and places that, okay. And then it was. Now it’s all the time, but, but back then, that was such a unexpected thing that took place. Alright, so Zoe, and I’ve been saying
Michael Ball: bad, how do you pronounce your surname?
Uh, it’s Baird and it’s actually, um, so the operations that we, she, she was named after an operation that Disaster Relief Australia was on. It was way far north Queensland and all the operations are named after, uh, a serving member that has, you know, fallen or like, was, was part of that community that we’re helping.
Yeah. And so Baird was the last name of that person and I feel really bad now ’cause I can’t recall the other half of it, but
Steve Davis: yeah, that’s what it is. Well, I wanted to talk about Disaster Relief Australia. Um, because you [01:20:00] are, you are part of the role. Was it technology manager? What’s your role there?
Michael Ball: Yeah, so I was technology manager for a year and a half.
Um, but I’ve just moved into, we call it the data governance coordinator, but think governance, risk and compliance for cyber and anything tech.
Steve Davis: Okay. Now my understanding is, and I’m gonna read this ’cause I wanted to get a summary ’cause I hate hosts who just get you to do this, uh, disaster Relief Australia.
It’s a veteran led not-for-profit organization dedicated to helping communities prepare for and recover from disasters such as floods, bush fires, cyclones, pandemics, et cetera. What is it that brings veterans, that brings, um, people who were first responders who might have retired back to, to sign up, to volunteer, to go to the pointy end of disaster?
It’s in our popular conscience, you’d think, wouldn’t you just want to be kicking [01:21:00] back like norm and watching the cricket on the, on, in a, in a beanbag?
Michael Ball: So. I want you to just close your eyes for a moment. Right. Cool. So, okay. And, and the people listening, unless you’re driving, do this too. Mm-hmm. Um, imagine a fire has just ripped through the state that you’re living in.
Mm-hmm. Everything around you is burnt and charred. There’s silence because the fire’s killed all the birds, all the uh, all the other animals that are around. There’s even no mosquitoes to bite you because the flames were so intense. Mm-hmm. You’ve come back, your backyard is in disarray, all your stuff is gone.
You’ve got rubble back where your house was, and you just stand there and you just feel empty. That’s where the people that we go to help are at their life. Mm-hmm. And yeah, when the firies go and the SES go and all the other teams that do a fantastic job in stopping the emergency, we’re the first [01:22:00] people that a lot of people have seen since then.
So we try to get there as soon as possible so we can start to get people moving forward. We can’t rebuild your house in a day, but we can help you get everything out of the way so that you can. So it’s about getting that first step. And, you know, first step towards recovery. It’s about helping people see the hope, um, and the service aspect.
The service aspect. Service never dies. Like you, you join the defense force, you join as a paramedic or a fiery because you accept that you wanna put your body on the line so that you can help other people not have to do that. And so when you finish it, you lose. When you discharge, you lose your people, you lose your purpose and you lose the mission.
And it’s just. You feel empty and it’s very hard to find a job that does that. Like how do you go [01:23:00] from literally impacting things that are happening around the world to then like building houses or something. Like it’s, and that’s not to look down upon building a house. I can’t do it. But, you know, it’s, it’s this great feeling of loss and then being able to go back out and have all your, your buddies around again, like you don’t know anyone.
Generally you get there and then you’re, you know, within a couple of days you’re all best mates because you’ve had the same suffering, which is the defense force. Like Yes. And you’ve gone through all the same bad training and being yelled at in bad conditions and getting rained on and all that sort of stuff.
And then you’re back out and it kind of feels normal and you’re like, oh yeah. And a disaster zone is just a war zone without bullets. Yeah. And so all of a sudden you are back in a very familiar territory and you know, you get together and you’re helping people and. The old CEO outgoing one, Jeff Evans, um, is a fantastic human being.
And he said, I don’t know who helps who most, a lot [01:24:00] of the time because veterans get so much out of it. Like, we’ve actually, DRA just did a, a study that went through, was it race? C? No, I forget. It’s one of the, the medical research places here. Huge. Right. Funny shape building. Um, and it proved that people, uh, particularly veterans, actually have reduced symptoms of PTSD and depression and things after going out with us.
So say your depression is at like a 10. You go out with us, it drops down to eight, and then it comes back up again to about nine. And then you go out with us again. It goes down to seven and then comes back up to, you know, eight and no, yeah, up to eight. And then it continues to kind of chip down like that because you can show up for other people.
If you can’t show up for yourself and helping people helps you, helps the community and it just feels like you are, you’re back in the military again, [01:25:00] but with only the good bits.
Steve Davis: Yeah. Like a
Michael Ball: virtual
Steve Davis: circle. Samari is what we’re looking for. I just looked it up while we’re, while you’re talking. Alright, so just give us a, because I must confess I hadn’t heard of DRA Yeah.
Until I was researching you to do this chat. Um. What’s an example of being called to action? And we could even talk about the one that led to the naming of Zoe, uh, or something
Michael Ball: else. So, uh, so the, the op Baird was when, so last year, the, there’s the Jewish, can I interrupt
Steve Davis: you did say the op Baird. I’ve had a look at the website.
There’s a lot of military style. You gotta be deployment ready? Yeah. Like it’s, it
Michael Ball: really is like a Yeah. You have strike teams mission commanders, that it’s the military without guns, I tell you. Okay. Um, sorry, but I interrupted you, but I
Steve Davis: just want to, you just, I just had to nail that while it was fresh.
Michael Ball: Yeah. So it, it does feel very militaryesque like. Um, but back to the question. Yes. So Op Baird was right where, uh, [01:26:00] the jewel cyclones happened. Uh, one smashed right into Brisbane from memory, and the other one hit far north Queensland. And so the Brisbane one was called op center, the far North Queensland one was called Op Baird.
And it was pretty much immediately. Uh, you know, a national, a na, a emergency situation and say we’re called in. Pretty much, that’s the flood waters we’re receding. Um, and it spins up like you wouldn’t believe. Like we look at the news, I’m like, that’s a lot of rain coming boss. And he goes, yep. Are we ready?
We. We will be. And so you sit down, you get everything ready and then they go, yep. It’s a, it’s a disaster. Uh, we’re going in. And then from there, everything’s just like, it’s super quick. We send out the stuff, we set up our Ford operating bases. Um, the volunteers are exceptional. Like they, they just drop everything at, at the moment’s notice and boom, they’re on the ground and drawn locally,
Steve Davis: or they come from [01:27:00] all over Australia,
Michael Ball: come from all over Australia, but we draw locally first just so that we’re not trying to swamp, um, their resources.
Yeah, because you’ve also gotta think if you’re going, like, we bring a lot of our own food and also drop things in for the towns while we’re there because we’re trying not to soak the few resources that they have left up. Um, and the Op Baird one, the reason I chose that name is because it was just. It was a, it was a hostile environment, not because of the people, but because you had like trees down over roads, you know, roads were washed away.
You had to like, even just tracking people was difficult ’cause it’s dense jungle. Right. And so it was, it was tricky. Um, I think at some stage I actually used one of the Navy landing barges. But don’t quote me on that. And that might be one of those that might be fake news. Um, but
Steve Davis: so how do you decide what tree, what to do when you’re there?
’cause there’s chaos. You must, there must be a protocol that you have brought from your military world that works out. It’s like the reverse of the center of a [01:28:00] gravity. We’re trying to put the center of gravity back again.
Michael Ball: Yeah. So they basically want to make the town as productive as possible before they leave.
And so to do that you have to start, you know, clearing so clear lines of communication. Mm-hmm. So that means clear the roads and allow things in and out. Okay. You go out to, you know, people’s houses and help them start to get things out of the way. This is sound like we’re just being able to clean up, but it’s, it’s not like we remove, uh, fallen trees or things that could become more of a danger Yep.
Help knock down like buildings sometimes. Um, a lot of chain sawing work to clear roads and things like that, but also it’s, you know, you’re wanting to get the main facilities up as well, like clearing out the main street and helping, you know, pull out all the stuff from, you know, the supermarkets so they can start getting foods in.
You know, it, it’s about getting the place functional again, but when you go really rural, it gets even trickier because a lot of that is just personal properties because, you know, [01:29:00] they’re not near anything. The shop might be like 500 kilometers away. Yeah. And so for them in particular, it is about making sure that everything you do, everything that you can to get them in the best position before you go basically.
So we have the.
Steve Davis: Um, CFS or whatever, they, they do the first SES, they’ll be there immediately. Mm-hmm. And then if it’s assessed that we’re gonna need a lot of help, that’s when DRA is gone.
Michael Ball: Yeah. ’cause we don’t want to get in their way either. Right. And like, we don’t want to be getting in the way of the SES No.
Steve Davis: Wow. Alright. Uh, and no doubt, I’ll put the link in the show notes if anyone wants to. You still welcome people to join you, don’t you? You’re not sure? Oh,
Michael Ball: absolutely. Yes, yes. Come and help you community. It’s fantastic.
Steve Davis: Alright. And, uh, just personally, the final level, I’m off on the SA variety bash very shortly, which is mm-hmm.
About three or 400 people in old cars going up through Outback South Australia to raise money for variety. Sa Yeah. Right. Which means sleeping in a swag on a stretcher for the first time. Now you’re probably thinking, well, that’s [01:30:00] soft, putting the stretcher underneath. Give us a lowdown on a. Yeah. Any tips for coping in where there’s nothing and you just have to camp in swags?
And what food gets you through the most so that you can survive? Uh, should anything not work? ’cause it’s been water logged up there terribly,
Michael Ball: right? So I am not your guy. So there’s an old line of, uh, the. The Navy navigates by the stars. Yes. The army sleeps under them and the wrath booked by them. Yes. So, uh, I have not spent all that much time outfield, thankfully.
Um, my idea, uh, or rather my, my knowledge of, you know, best way to stay warm was just I would book a hotel. Um, wow. So, yeah, I’m not your, I’m not your guy as far as that goes, Michael. I could look at the intelligence toge way to go, but like, uh,
Steve Davis: alright, well the whole reason I did the in No it isn’t. [01:31:00] Alright, look, appreciate that.
I appreciate the honesty. I mean, you gotta be candid.
Michael Ball: Yeah, no, I think it would just, uh, be, be very apparent very quickly how little I knew if I tried to answer that question. Okay. Very good. Played with a straight bat as
Steve Davis: held by Donald Bradman. That’s it. Thank you very much for being part of this. In closing, there is an art competition underway at the moment.
I’ll put a link to that in the show notes. What is the short version?
Michael Ball: So the short version is, um, probably gonna be a medium version. Sorry. Um, I believe that young people live in this weird world where they’re stuck in the real world and also the realm of the impossible. And because of that, they can create wondrous things that we can’t necessarily think of.
And because of that, I want to give them an opportunity to develop that. So the art competition is a chance for any student to, um, not uni student, must be primary or high school, um, to create a, a scene from a [01:32:00] chapter that I have up on my website for the next book. Um, and they win the opportunity. So they, they, they had the opportunity to win $500 as well as being the title page for the book.
So if you look in the Zoe Baird book, the very first page is the, um, the winner of the last art competition that was done by a 14-year-old. Um, and it blew me away when I saw it. So I just love seeing young people create things and I thought it would be a great way to have a little, something unique in my book that other people don’t have.
No,
Steve Davis: it’s great. This is actually a good drawing and I, I can picture that scene from the story, right? Immediately. I remember that, uh, I believe the mum was in the back. Oh no. I won’t give anything away at this point. Um, but that is a nice little quip. That’s one of those quips where it went past my wall.
Absolutely. That was not meant to give anything away. Um. Okay. What, what’s [01:33:00] the deadline for entering that competition?
Michael Ball: So the deadline is the Friday of week 10 of term three. On the exact date I have gone completely blank on right now. You know, I just,
Steve Davis: September
Michael Ball: 26th
Steve Davis: baby, you know, I just, um, ran a workshop for edu people from the education department saying, stop saying week 10 term.
No human being knows what that means. Uh, uh. Anyway, they will know what that means. Thank you very much. I’ll put links to the book. Where would you prefer people to buy it from?
Michael Ball: So, that very much depends on when this podcast goes out, if it’s, uh, which will be very shortly sweet. Well, in that case, if it’s in August, uh, it should be pretty much anywhere you can download an ebook.
Mm-hmm. Um, I’ll be having it up for free. Uh, but the actual book itself can only be bought through Amazon and in store at Dimmick’s in Adelaide. Alright, fantastic.
Steve Davis: The book is Zoe Baird. Even though I pronounce it bad, uh, pathogens and pop stars and, uh, it’s [01:34:00] a, it’s a good little read. And if you’ve got someone in that young teen field, it’s worth a shot.
Thanks for being part of Adelaide show. No, thank you very much for having me.
TAS Theme: And now it’s time for the musical pilgrimage.
Steve Davis: In the musical pilgrimage. We were just talking about a major pop star coming to Adelaide Oval to have a concert, which then becomes the scene of a potential bio logical warfare, uh, event. Thank you, Michael. Um, I look forward to the next concert I go to with that in mind.
Um, and it just made me think, well, some of the big artists there, I mean, Madonna. It’s probably one of the biggest names who’s performed there? Yes, we’ve had the Rolling Stones, um, Adele Pink, you name it. There’ve been lots of people there. Madonna was huge, and it ties a couple of strands in my world together.
First of all, knowing Michael now and learning about, uh, Zoe, [01:35:00] his character that brought it onto my radar, but also Mel Usher, uh, news reader extraordinaire here in Adelaide. Just celebrated a major birthday recently and she is an absolute tragic when it comes to the eighties. She loves it. She was sharing, uh, tidbits about her life in the lead up to her, uh, birthday, and I picked a few things out there such as her liking denim and stripes.
If you’ve lived through the eighties, you’ll remember that denim and stripes were dominant features in the world of fashion along with padded shoulders. I have to admit, uh, I even had dem. Peroxide tips in my hair was longer hair there, peroxide tips and I used to shave at night so that as I was working through the day, I had a little bit of that George Michael five o’clock shadow at about 10:30 AM Uh, those were the days anyway, uh, I drew a number of things together from her world and asked.
Or worked with my, uh, virtual session band, the Virtual Osos, [01:36:00] and we have structured a song that is an eighties anthem. It’s all over the streaming networks now. Uh, it’s Mel Usher’s song, but I think anyone who has a love for the eighties. We’ll find it maybe upbeat and something that brings back some of the, the good thoughts about that, that, uh, era.
Let’s have a listen to it now. This is Mel Usher’s song. It’s the eighties anthem. It’s by Steve Davis and the Virtuosos, and it’s called Denim and Stripes
Steve Davis & The Virtualosos: for
Only
Save You When You Are Down. Only you me [01:37:00] Through When Love a Battle.
Those angels help my.
I’m walking on sunshine, still dancing like it. Five final. You played the best, not no. Still video.
Everybody wants to, I just want[01:38:00]
time after time. And
A, B, C. You old, clever. Lyrics and had a play. Di Restraints got a soul twisting while helped us pray. Denim and stripes, walk on sunshine, still dancing. Five vinyl tape. You played the best Souls not no, still alive. It stole the even. Still right? Denim and stripes addicted to you and my heart.[01:39:00]
They say, ladies, no soul, but that’s not what I.
I should be so lucky to have heaven when
I knew something. Tone down, they tell me now, but I[01:40:00]
red my true color.
Still dancing. I can say to you, five vinyl and you played the best. No, still
it’s even though, lady, you’re still denim and stripes addicted to you and La
Denim and stripes. I’m walking on sunshine, still dancing like it’s Sadie.
You played the best.[01:41:00]
Steve Davis: That’s Denim and Stripes by Steve Davis and the virtual osos. And that’s, uh, an extra happy birthday to Mel Usher there. Hope you’ve enjoyed the episode, the song, and maybe grab the book at Dimmick’s or online. Until next time, it’s goodnight for me, Steve Davis and goodnight Dawn.
AJ Davis: The Adelaide Show Podcast is produced by my dad, Steve Davis.
If you want to start a podcast or get some help producing creative content, talk to him. Visit steve davis.com au. Thanks, aj. I’m Caitlin Davis, and I agree with everything my sister said, but there’s one more thing to say. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please leave a rating or a review ’cause that will make my dad really happy.
Oh, and one more thing. If you really, really liked it, please help [01:42:00] a friend put the Adelaide Show on their phone. Thanks for listening.
Buzz Buzz.
TAS Theme: Bad lady.
The other lady who.