Real Life: Kiwi documentary maker Rob Harley on journey back from brink of death

Real Life With John Cowan

Warning: This article discusses suicidal ideation.

One of New Zealand’s most experienced journalists has opened up on his brush with death – and how a subsequent battle with depression has enabled him to become a “wounded healer” for those in need.

Rob Harley, whose storied 50-year career has seen him work in current affairs for TVNZ, in radio, as a church pastor and a documentary maker, has earned a reputation as a talented storyteller.

But in an interview with Newstalk ZB’s Real Life with John Cowan on Sunday night, now-70-year-old Harley recounted how he very nearly lost it all – his career, finances, mental health and life – after his liver failed eight and a half years ago.

“I was wheeled into an operating theatre at Auckland City Hospital, where I was lucky enough to have one of the best liver transplant surgeons in the world work on me,” he told Real Life.

“He pulled my old diseased liver out and gave me a new one. Afterwards he said, ‘Rob, you had two weeks to live, we got you just in time’.”

While grateful to escape alive, after the liver transplant things “really cascaded downwards”, says Harley.

“I had a very successful documentary-making business. It went well, but I’d had bad advice on tax and ended up with a horrendous tax bill, and then I had a documentary series which was incredibly successful on TV, but absolutely stripped me bare financially.

“We went bankrupt. We walked away from a beautiful little farm in west Auckland, and we were basically gipsies for the next eight years.”

Harley’s varied work over the years has seen him travel the world, and in 2001 he claimed an international journalism award for his story on TVNZ’s Assignment about a west Auckland firefighter turned arsonist.

But he admits the reporting he’s done – much of it traumatic in nature, or from war zones – has taken a mental toll.

“In Cambodia, we were at a water festival and we just got out in time before 400 people were trampled to death in a stampede,” he recalled.

“The next morning, almost robot-like, we went into the grounds of a hospital and filmed the bodies of 50 to 60 dead teenagers with toe tags on, with people trying to identify them.

“That stuff never came back and bit me on the bum until years later. In fact, it did at the end of last year, along with so much other stuff I've seen. It gets into your head and at some point the payment falls due.”

Recent years have also brought bouts of severe depression, Harley revealed. He said it seems to be common among transplant patients.

“Something happens to your head, and I lost it… I was in the black dog for about four years, I was incommunicado. I look back at my Facebook Messenger from 2017, 2018, and I had just shut down,” he said.

But he pulled himself back through a combination of “good care, good drugs and good mates”.

“I had a bloke who would call me every second day and say, ‘Zero to ten, how are you doing?’ He knew I was suicidal and sometimes I'd say ‘minus-15’. He said, ‘Okay, bro, let's get you up to two tomorrow’.

“It saved my life. You've got to have good people around you.”

That experience, of dealing with the worst of depression and emerging out the other side, has earned him a reputation as something of a de facto suicide counsellor.

Harley says while some people think it sounds ghoulish and tough, he’s grateful for it. He says wounded people often make “the best healers”.

“Every week I am next to people who are on the edge. People say, ‘Boy, that sounds ghoulish, that sounds tough’, but I love it because you actually teach people the art of something as simple as gratitude,” Harley said.

“I was talking to someone the other day who doesn't want to live. I said, ‘Get in the shower in the morning and tell yourself three things that you are proud of yourself for having done’. And it's starting to work. Along with a bit of humour and a bit of distraction, I can see the light’s going on.

“There’s nothing in the world like the experience of building something into the life of a hurting person.”

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WHERE TO GET HELP:

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