Scott Matthews overcame thoughts of suicide to create Kokoda Centurions
An Adelaide man hopes his journey from the brink of suicide can inspire others - and has launched a unique venture on the Kokoda Track to raise awareness about mental health.
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Scott Matthews was thinking about suicide anywhere between once an hour and five times a minute.
He was exhausted with the constant battle raging within. His body was telling him it couldn’t go on. His consciousness told him he must.
The police officer turned finance broker was going through a divorce and buried deep in a Family Court case. He knew being a father for his sons Oliver and Austin was his top priority. But the universe was conspiring against him.
Lawyer bills were piling up. Friends he thought he could lean on went missing. A bus stop ad for Lifeline left him sobbing uncontrollably at the wheel during an Anzac Highway traffic jam. He woke in the middle of most nights sweating with stress.
One night, during that regular witching-hour turmoil, everything became too much. The delicate balance he had been desperately trying to maintain fell away.
His voice shakes with emotion as he remembers the night. “I just walked into the lounge room and that was just a night where the question was who was going to win – which part of me was going to win,” he says.
“And for the first time, I didn’t think it was going to be me (his conscious self who wanted to live). And that’s sad for me because of everyone it would have hurt.” He wrote a Post-it note for the door to tell his family to call the police and not enter the room. After attending numerous suicides in his previous job, he was aware of the trauma of first responders.
And then Matthews started to write. He wrote to explain his reasons. To tell his boys he loved them, and encourage them to achieve great things. Once he started though, he couldn’t stop. The writing continued for page after page until gradually, ever so gradually, he moved away from the metaphoric edge.
He threw the Post-it note in the bin and went back to bed. The immediate crisis was averted. His mental health battles continued as the court case dragged on and only now, six years later, is he starting to emerge from the mire.
As he does so, he wants to help others. He knows that the key to getting through dark times is to communicate, and have others willing to listen to your problems, and help you work through them.
He also wants to do something for himself. He wants to walk the Kokoda Track in Papua New Guinea. He’s done it before and wants to relive the wonders that come with following the footsteps of Australia’s World War II heroes who repelled the Japanese back in 1942.
And so he came up with the concept of finding 100 people to join him, of creating a community who can share the experience of walking the historic track and can then continue to lean on each other moving forward. He even had a name for it – Kokoda Centurions.
He shared the idea with friends Mignon Furnell and Derrick McManus, who he walked the track with back in 2009, and between them they created a registered not-for-profit organisation that sets off on its first trek in August. About 70 people are registered for their inaugural walk but they haven’t given up hope of reaching their goal of 100 and believe momentum from this first year will flow into what they plan to be an annual event.
“In early 2024, after rebuilding my life from a really traumatic separation and divorce I decided I wanted to walk Kokoda again,” Matthews, now 47, says. “I wanted it to be an outlet for men to rebuild their lives following really circumstantial environmental depression – so financial pressures, divorce pressures, whatever has got them down.
“The previous eight years had been all about me and all been negative so I needed to do something positive to go back to where my life was before.”
The trio decided the venture would raise money and awareness for men’s mental health and gender-based violence and have joined forces with SA’s Breakthrough Mental Health Research Foundation and Victorian charity The Man Cave. Their goal is to foster resilience, support, and community networks, while breaking cycles of violence, promoting self-awareness, and fostering positive masculinity and mental health awareness.
For Matthews, it’s all about giving men the self-awareness and knowledge that they have the resilience and capability to overcome any mental health demons.
“Men need to know there is a path, there is a way through,” he says. “It’s really, really difficult, but you can get through. Let’s say you’re having a really difficult time right now and you go, ‘Right, I’m going to walk Kokoda in August.’ Well, you’re going to start exercising. You’re going to drop your alcohol consumption because you don’t want to have a negative effect on your exercise and you’re going to meet other people who have been through a hard time.
“And then you’re going to go on this journey and you’re going to fulfil and enrich your person and you’ll come back going, ‘Yeah I can do this, I can get through it.’ Because every time that there is a man who ends his life, which is seven times a day, there are children left behind and mothers left behind, siblings left behind and friends left behind that have to pick up the pieces of that suicide … it’s just not an option.”
Matthews says men suffering through mental health issues were often too stubborn to ask for help – something their female friends did more naturally. The inaugural Kokoda Centurions trip, from August 22-31, will include sessions from Breakthrough Mental Health Research Foundation and The Man Cave facilitators and a fireside chat with McManus, a former police officer who survived being shot 14 times during an arrest-gone-wrong in the Barossa Valley in 1994.
Matthews, McManus and Furnell say the partnerships with The Man Cave and Breakthrough align perfectly with their goals. The charters of both organisations include a focus on the mental health of men and boys.
Breakthrough is Australia’s only foundation purely focused on raising money to invest in life-changing mental health research. One of the primary goals of The Man Cave is preventing gender-based violence and promoting healthy masculinity.
“We’re not going to change the world, we know that,” Matthews says. “But we think we can plant that seed and that we can nurture that seed to be independent and strong and create an umbrella for the next generation where men won’t consider violence against their partner.
“Kokoda Centurions will be that seed that starts teaching men and young men to go, ‘It’s just not okay’ … you don’t get to assault that person. And when a man’s going through a hard time, a really hard time, suicide just isn’t an option. Let’s take that off the table. Because of what you’ve learned through Kokoda Centurions, you understand that you will get through this.”
Matthews’ sons Oliver and Austin are now 14 and 12 respectively. Oliver will be joining his dad on the track this year. Austin will follow suit in a couple of years’ time. They’ve endured a difficult few years since their parents’ divorce, but their dad hopes the sweat, mud, mosquitoes and leeches of Kokoda will provide a turning point.
“This year will be a journey of completion and rebuilding,” Matthews says. “For Oliver and I to go on this together is the most special thing.
“Not only are we celebrating the growth of a community and a good cause and everything else but for Oliver it’s a journey together at the completion of a really difficult part in our life.
“For Oliver, Austin and myself, from where I was to where I am, the resilience required to endure a separation like mine is, I suppose, akin to the resilience and the endurance you need to get through Kokoda.
“And it might not be a separation – whatever someone’s challenges are, whatever the biggest issue they’re facing that makes them contemplate suicide, the message is that you need to build that resilience and endurance.
“And that there is hope at the end. I hope that’s what I can prove, when people look where I am now opposed to where I was.” ■
If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, please reach out for support. You can contact Lifeline Australia at 13 11 14 for confidential 24/7 crisis support and suicide prevention services. Or visit their website at lifeline.org.au for more information and resources. You are not alone, and help is available.
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