Indigenous Sport Month: Greg Inglis saving lives and finding purpose with The Goanna Academy

Greg Inglis was as fearsome a sight as there ever has been in rugby league - but GI has found an even greater purpose in life. And it’s as heartbreaking as it is heartwarming.

Sometimes after saving a life, Greg Inglis will disappear to sleep.

At least initially, and for up to three hours.

In part, he says, because continually reliving your battles with depression and alcoholism, with medications, mood fluctuations, rehabilitation, even those darkest of thoughts, continually retelling all of that over and over, often up to four times a day, and always to a new group of strangers, it wears Inglis down in ways he never expected.

Same as at least once a week, the bipolar for which he is now medicated will also leave this South Sydney great feeling somewhere between low and not wanting to walk out the front door.

Greg Inglis poses up in Redfern for Indigenous Sport Month. Picture: Tim Hunter.

Which is no small thing, especially given his time now spent on the road.

Yet what really causes Inglis to collapse, completely exhausted, on the motel bed of whichever bush town he and his latest venture, the Goanna Academy, have rumbled into that week?

It’s the secrets being whispered back to him.

Stories so unbelievably horrific, so vile, that on the day we meet inside a Sydney cafe to discuss his new life as a mental health advocate, this now 35-year-old won’t repeat even basic details until the very end of our conversation, and only once the tape recorder has turned off.

Same as whenever he visits a remote community, school, youth centre, whatever, Inglis always blocks out at least a few hours after lunch so, after once more retelling his own story, then hearing new secrets told back, he can disappear to sleep, talk with fellow Academy staffers or simply breathe.

Aware that come the afternoon, another child could be sat opposite him confiding about sexual assault, self harm or some other innocence not simply lost, but stolen – oftentimes violently.

“Which is heartbreaking,” he says.

“Some of the stuff happening in Australian communities right now, most people don’t want to hear it.”

Inglis though, is listening.

By the time you read this, already up, out the door and working today in the NSW country town of Orange.

Greg Inglis leads Indigenous All Stars war cry. (Photo by Tony Feder/Getty Images)

Same as next week, it will be Toowoomba.

While after that, and right through until Christmas, this proud Indigenous man, a Dunghutti warrior in every sense, is slated to visit some 10 communities across NSW, Queensland, West Australia, even the Northern Territory.

Which again, has its price.

With Inglis conceding how after hearing some of those secrets whispered to him, “I then need to seek help too”.

Really?

“Oh, it happens regularly,” he continues, voice softening. “But you can’t work in this space without working on yourself.”

So for the past two years, Inglis has.

In fact, while so many of his footballing peers remain tattooed to the game – think Billy Slater, Cam Smith, Benji Marshall and Johnathan Thurston – Inglis’s only remaining links are the occasional bush footy appearance for Macksville.

That, and the name now attached to his new purpose — the Goanna Academy.

At his peak, there was no more fearsome sight in rugby league than Inglis in full flight.

A breakout Australian mental health organisation which, named after that famed try celebration, and the first of its kind to be owned by an Indigenous man, aims to identify, discuss and manage mental health for those greatest at risk.

Which means at least twice a week, Inglis leaves his family acreage on Sydney’s outskirts for a CBD office where he not only “battles with that latest excel spreadsheet”, but schedules community visits, meets with government officials and sponsors while, over and over, retells a story first exposed in 2020, on Australian Story.

Back when, Inglis reveals today, he not only spoke more deeply than ever before about his battles with depression, or how Dr Gordon Parker — the man behind the famed Black Dog Institute — finally diagnosed him with Bipolar II, but behind the scenes, when the cameras switched off, also agreed to this new life he now lives.

Happy?

Bloody oath.

Inglis has always been enormously proud of his Indigenous heritage. Picture: AAP

With Inglis today mixing his work with The Goanna Academy into a life all about his children, family, occasional games of bush footy, reducing his golf handicap from 12, growing a clothing label, breeding horses — “I’ve got my first one ready for the races” — and only this past week, pausing from all of it to honeymoon in Bali with wife Alyse – whom he wed, privately, in a Hunter Valley ceremony before just 30 guests.

“But my private life, it’s always been exactly that,” he shrugs

Which makes everything about his new work even more remarkable.

Especially when you hear how Inglis, day after day, town after town, is now continually opening himself up to somebody new.

Which again, started around the time of that Australian Story feature.

“Which initially, I was hesitant about,” the Queensland Origin great recalls.

“But I remember this one day, Professor Parker saying to me: ‘Greg do this and you can change a life ... you can save a life’.

“That’s what got me.

“It’s why I did Australian Story. And why I started the Goanna Academy.”

So how many lives has he saved?

“Ahh, I’ve had six people tell me that,” Inglis continues softly, yet deliberately — as if to suggest he thinks about each one often.

And the youngest?

“Just 13,” he adds.

Greg Inglis with wife Alyse.

Which again, is why he now gives so much of himself on these visits, it drains Inglis to the point of sleep.

“But it has to be personal,” he insists.

“Because kids especially, they can smell bullshit a mile away.

“So I can’t just speak to them as a rugby league star.

“I have to go there as somebody who not only dealt with what they have, but still deals with it now. I have to be genuine about my own experiences because it’s only once I get personal with them that they can trust me.”

Which for Inglis, is key.

“Because only with trust will they open up,” he continues.

“And sometimes that might only be an extra sentence. Or even an extra word.

“But I need to get right down to whatever they’re holding back.”

Which, again, can be horrific.

“And it does take a toll on me,” Inglis admits. “But I’m surrounded by a tight group of people who I can debrief with.

“I also arrive into every community a day before the talks start, just to meet with local councillors, principals, elders, welfare officers, everyone.

“Because when you know what is really going on, that’s when you can work out what is really needed to help.”

Which is the same with Inglis himself.

Asked how often that old darkness still creeps in on him, one of Australia’s greatest leaguies ever replies: “At least once a week.

“Sometimes more.

Russell Crowe with Greg Inglis at Redfern Oval. Picture: Brett Costello

“But if I wake up and I’m not feeling great, I’ll give the Goanna Academy guys a heads up and they take over whatever I have on.

“That allows me to reset.

“To drop the phone, close the laptop and just go be with the horses on our property.”

The horses?

“We’ve got five. They’re my coping mechanism,” he says.

“But for me to understand all this, I first needed to understand what was going on within myself.”

Which is never easy.

“Took me years, plus two stints in rehab,” he explains.

“And at times, I just pushed on until it all got too much. Until I didn’t want to leave the house.

“And I still have that now.

“Days where I don’t want to leave the house.

“But now I understand why.”

Which means what?

“Relief,” he says.

Greg Inglis at his mural in Redfern. Picture: Tim Hunter.

“For the longest time I wondered what was wrong with me.

“You’re popping pills, they don’t work. You get more, they don’t work, either.

“So then you start questioning yourself.

“Start drinking.

“What’s wrong?

“And for some people, it gets worse again ... and they end up going that other way.”

Which is why now, quite literally, Inglis speaks until the point of exhaustion.

“Because we have to keep learning,” he says. “Keep talking.

“All of us.”

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Originally published as Indigenous Sport Month: Greg Inglis saving lives and finding purpose with The Goanna Academy