03/03/2026
Brendan Cullen’s life story is powerful, timely and worth a listen.
It’s one of immense personal courage, and discussed here with so much humility.
Today it's Sarah's conversation with Brendan Cullen, who for years was known around Broken Hill as the happy man who ran thousands of ewes across tens of thousands of hectares with a smile.
What they didn't see was the guy crying in a room by himself, "drinking himself stupid", thinking he wasn’t providing enough for his family.
Brendan calls himself a ‘glorified shepherd’.
He manages a sheep station outside Broken Hill, a part of the country he loves and knows like the back of his hand.
But Brendan also has another moniker: ‘the desert swimmer’.
A few years ago, he was floored by a cruel bout of depression, the core of which he later understood came from an experience of childhood sexual abuse that he never spoke about.
While recovering, Brendan decided to try to swim the English Channel.
As his swim coach Mike ‘the Tractor’ told him: swimming the channel is straightforward – you get in the water at Dover and keep swimming until you hit something, and that something is France.
The swim is just one of the tools in his 'toolkit' that he uses to stay mentally well and present with his family, and his flock.
https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/conversations/brendan-cullen-broken-hill-farmer-mental-health-swimming/106391278
