Five Australian men reveal: “The best advice my father ever gave me”

Duncan Armstrong,Olympic Gold Medallist

“When I had my first son, Branston, back in 1992, I was still swimming and still very self-centred. I remember being outside with my dad, and Branston was inside, with the family going nuts over him. My heart was just so full of love for him, I thought it was going to pop. I was feeling overwhelmed by the whole experience.

“I looked at my old man and realised that he’d had five kids. I said, ‘Dad, how did you cope with five? Goodness gracious, I’m getting overwhelmed by one!’

“And he looked at me, shook his head and said, ‘Mate, don’t worry. Your heart swells. It swells as many times as it needs to fit them all in.’

“It was interesting because my dad doesn’t talk like that. In this instance, I would have expected him to slap me on the back and say, ‘Oh, mate, you’ll be right.’ What he said put a lot of my fears as a young dad to rest. Will I be good enough? Will I earn enough? Will the kid be happy?

“I really hadn’t known how I was going to cope. And dad gave me this piece of advice that’s come into my head whenever I’ve gone and had another child. I had two in my first marriage, I’ve had two since and we’re planning number five.

“Now that I’m 42, I sometimes look back at that 22-year-old and I’m proud of the father I’ve become. I don’t really get tied in knots anymore about what’s happening with them or where they’re going to go. I’m more excited than anything else. It hasn’t all been a sweet, sweet ride, but I know I’ll always have space in my heart for as many kids as I have. My heart will just keep on growing.”

Shane Jacobson, Actor

“I was 15 when my dad began to worry that I wouldn’t get a chance to enjoy my youth because I was always so busy. At that point I was in school, I was involved in scouting and theatre shows, I was on the student representative council, and I was one of those kids who had a paper round and took whatever work I could get to gain experience.

“One day he said to me, ‘I don’t want you to miss out on what other kids are doing, which is just living. A lot of your mates will be down at the beach at the moment . . . why aren’t you?’. His point was that at all stages of life, there are times you have to get off the ‘hustle bus’ and smell the roses.

“Now that the world is spinning so fast for me, I occasionally hear that older, wiser voice go off in my head like an alarm. And when I get a moment to put my feet up with a glass of wine or sit in a park and look at the clouds, I try to resist the thought that there’s something else I should be doing, like checking my emails or making that phone call.

“Those thoughts, those feelings of guilt, like there’s something better or more productive I should be doing with my time, instead of just sitting here, they hit me a lot. The truth is, I do spend my life trying to achieve things constantly. I do need to use my time wisely and all that sort of stuff. But it’s when those thoughts intrude on quieter, more relaxing times, that’s when my dad’s words come back to me. I’ve come to realise that he was right. The whole point is we’re supposed to work to live, not live
to work.”

Craig Foster, SBS Football Analyst

“My father always warned me to be careful whom I surrounded myself with. ‘Never hang around with people of poor character,’ he’d say.

“There was an incident in high school that hammered this message home. I’d become friends with a bloke my dad disliked instantly.

He was constantly telling me he didn’t want me spending time with him. But I was 13 years old and thought my father was totally over-reacting.

“Later that term, my class went on a geography excursion to Byron Bay. We visited a souvenir shop before getting the bus home.

Back at school, my class was summoned to see the principal. The owner of the shop had rung up because two geological specimens had been stolen. I knew nothing about this. But as this mate and I had been lagging behind in the shop, we were suspected of pinching them.

“The pair of us were told to go to the principal’s office the next day. I confronted my friend. ‘Alright, I did it,’ he said. ‘Just keep your mouth shut and we’ll be okay.’ I was crapping myself. I didn’t know whether to protect my friend or protect my reputation. I decided I couldn’t rat on my mate.

“The next thing I knew, I was ordered to see the principal on my own. ‘We know you’ve done it,’ he said. To save himself, my supposed mate had given a written statement saying I’d stolen the rocks. Having never been in trouble before, I was facing suspension.

“Thankfully, without my prompting, a group of friends came forward and saved me by telling the teachers what’d happened. That was the moment I realised the true importance of good character and what my father had said.”

Fozz on Football is out now

Akmal Saleh, comedian

“I lost my father when I was 14. He was a philosophical man. When I was disappointed, he used to say, ‘Don’t regret anything. If you miss out, don’t despair – the alternative may be positive in the long run. It’s better to believe that everything happens for the greater good.’

“Years ago, after a gig supporting Jimoein, Richard Branson approached me and asked if I’d like to do some work for Virgin. I thought he asked me whether I had ‘done’ work for Virgin. So I said, ‘No’. Branson still wanted a CD of my work and wrote his address on a napkin. My mates were yelling, ‘What are you doing? You just turned down Branson!’ So I started joking around, pretending to blow my nose on his address. When I looked up, Branson was looking at me, slowly shaking his head.

“Later, thinking about how much I’d fucked it up, I was comforted by my father’s advice. If you believe the universe is looking out for you, then you don’t have so many regrets.”

The Life of Akmal is out now

Sam de Brito, author/columnist

“Years ago, I was forlorn about a break-up, so I decided to send a desperate love letter to this girl to win her back. Before sending it, I read it to my dad. He listened and said, ‘Don’t send that. In fact, don’t write love letters, particularly after a break-up, because they’ll come back to haunt you.’ I didn’t send it. But years later, I found that letter and thought, ‘Thank God, I didn’t send it’. It redefined needy and pathetic. Ever since that advice, I’ve never been a love-letter writer. I reckon if you’ve got something to say, say it in person.”

Sam de Brito is author of No Sex with Your Ex!