An ex-rugby union player and solo dad who raised his kids in the creeks and river gullies of the Valley and the community’s warm embrace, Mike Hayes now runs resilience-training programs for corporates and young people, including elite private schools, and appeared as a cast member of wilderness-survival program Alone Australia SBS. He has a unique perspective on the masculine and a deep connection to this landscape. So I wanted to talk to him about how this landscape has shaped him, a Valley man.
“The whole philosophy behind Kangaroo Valley Adventure Company (KVAC) and Wilderness Experience Training (WET) is to tap into the positive spiritual energy of Kangaroo Valley, which was first recognised by our First Nations people,” Hayes says.
“The Valley to them was always a place of festivity. It was a place of birthing, it was a place of celebration. It was known for that aspect of their cultural being. It’s that energy, especially of the Upper River, that’s so important and puts a stamp on what I feel the Valley represents.”
In terms of masculine and feminine, Hayes sees Moss Vale Road as almost the divide: “If you go west of here, you go from soft, alluvial rainforest to sclerophyllous, sandstone-ey, shaley environments – they’re almost two different environments – and both are as good as each other, west being masculine and east being feminine.” (I note that the January 2020 bushfire burnt nearly all the masculine country but the feminine was saved. What to make of this?)
From him I learn that if you stand at the bus stop on Upper River Road you can see what he calls ‘the sentinels’ to Upper River, masculine and feminine represented in the shapes of the escarpment: to the left of the road you can see the warrior, lying on his side; looking towards Jarretts Lane, there is the woman with her pointed shoulder, her swollen, pregnant belly.
Upper River is where Hayes will regularly go, alone, for his own peace and to look after his insight, self-nurturing and growth, by opening to the peace and life force in his special sanctuary places. When I ask what the Valley can offer men in terms of supporting them, he recommends this straight away. “Find yourself a sanctuary. Find somewhere you can be still, where you can be present.”
Growth comes up again and again in our conversation, as does gifting and regifting – not material items but experiences, connection, knowledge of Country and landscape. Adopted some years ago by the Yolŋu people of Arnhem Land, his story of Terrence Gurruwiwi’s gift of a stingray bracelet he’d made, with the words “While you are not of this land, my brother, my wawa, you have this land in your heart. Take this,” especially moves me. Hayes and son Billy (who now runs KVAC and WET) also incorporate gifting in their different leadership, resilience and right-of-passage programs.
In these times of concern about toxic forces shaping boys’ development, especially online, exposed in programs such as the ABC’s parenting show The Role of a Lifetime and the Netflix series Adolescence, the question keeps popping up: how do we fix this? I have thought often of Hayes’s programs and his descriptions of teaching men and boys to tap into the best of their own nature, including respecting and integrating the feminine parts of themselves. To him it’s obvious: men have both female and male DNA, why only use one set of capacities? And isn’t teaching this the best way to give young men a foundation on which to build a lasting, and robust, respect for women?
Delving into the activities on the different programs, from ROPE to the Campfire Boardroom to leadership programs for women’s rugby teams and young people, as well as the extra efforts to accommodate the needs of visiting families, I can see they’re designed not just to get results in terms of promised outcomes but actually to make better people, a better society. “With Billy taking over the business, I hope people realise: it’s a lot more than a canoe-hire outfit. A lot more.”
In Hayes, as in his business, there’s an appealing mix of toughness and caring warmth and that’s not accidental. Listening to him as our talk ranges from nature to training, to midlife gifts and challenges (and the joy of being the young upstart among his Valley tennis buddies), it’s clear he takes care to learn from people and experiences.
Alone, of course, is one of these experiences.
Incredibly, the first many of us knew he’d be a contestant on Alone was when the trailers went to air. Tapping out early (for reasons he discusses beautifully with Gina Chick on the SBS Alone podcast – QR link below), Hayes says he had already experienced so much, and received so many gifts from the time there.
Since his childhood near Crookwell, the natural world has always been a second home to Hayes. Given the number of amazing natural-world moments Hayes is present for at just the right moment, I’m starting to suspect nature loves him back. For example, the times he sits in one of his favourite Upper River spots and “the platypus just come around me”.
Hayes has become known as a kind of platypus whisperer and has long offered happy visitors and locals the chance to see them in the wild on his tours. Having ticked off awareness-raising, he has a new adventure in mind, recently acquiring land on the Upper Kangaroo River: platypus protection.
“This land has enabled me to fulfil the dream of having a platypus sanctuary in our incredible valley and to continue delivering nurturing mental health and wellbeing programs for both kids and adults, tapping into Mother Nature’s transformative healing power,” Hayes says. He’ll be establishing the sanctuary over the next six months.
“If life’s a painting,” he said to me as we closed the interview, “mine’s nowhere near finished.”
If you haven’t seen the podcast where Mike Hayes talks about his Alone experience with Gina Chick, check it out here.
