I was a teenage Navy diver in the Iraq War. Then I had to make a new life for myself

A.B.C. Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music, and more. Aaron Tate grew up with the dream of joining the Navy, like his big brother and his dad, his grandad, and his great-granddad all had. Aaron saw the Navy as an adventure, a way to see the world and a means of making him a man. Aaron got his dream and then some. At just 17 he was deployed to the Persian Gulf as a military officer, where he excelled in the highly dangerous work of boarding and stopping illegal Iraqi boats. But what Aaron learned about himself and the world while at war eventually set him on a very different path. His memoir is called Far Horizons. Hi, Aaron. Hi Sarah. You spent a lot of your childhood in New Zealand. How big a part did war and fighting play in your imagination as a kid? We had, you know, GI Joe's were our toy of choice. Dad would go to the back shed and craft these fake machine guns for us. And every afternoon was armies and in our bases and we watched war movies, you know, Top Gun was the most watch VCR in our household and we read books like Douglas Bader reached for the sky of these World War II heroes. So we were surrounded by this. We knew that our, the men in our family had joined up, ideally they'd gone off to war and had adventures and found glory. Your dad was a keen hunter. What did he wear when he went hunting? There's always a pair of short can to be rugby shorts and a swan drive, which New Zealand will know it, but Australians, you know, the drier's the bone is the equivalent here. It's a very thick woolen smock, basically. So his, his legs would be, you know, exposed to the gore, spush and the thorns and he put his boots on his cannery shorts and his hunting smock and out he would go and then he'd come back three days later with a wild boar and his shoulders and he would sort of thump it on the kitchen bench much to my mother's horror. So you were 12 when you were first invited along with him on a hunting trip. How did you feel about, about the prospect of that? Thrilled. I, you know, I'd been training with my air rifle in the garage. I could shoot a hole through the, you know, the circle on the pee of the Pepsi can and I was ready to go and I had my own rugby shorts and my own boots and I didn't have a swan drive yet. I were too expensive, but I was heading out with dad and just here and I and the gun we were using on those hunts was an AK-47. He gave you a knife as well. He did a hunting knife for my 12th birthday. It was something I would take out with me on my first hunt. It had his initials on it and it also had this little mantra that he was gifting to me far horizons. You came across a herd of feral goats. What happened when you started shooting? So we were paid by the government, by the environmental services to, to be hunting these feral animals. So possums, goats, even boars. And you don't know if you're going to find anything. You know, it's wild, New Zealand bush and we came across a big herd, 40, 50 animals. And we've been tracking them the whole day and then it got to the point where this was the moment to open fire. And dad started, he wasn't talking anymore, he didn't want to scare that herd. So he started using hands, signals and I just thought, it's just like the movies. And he was down the hill, a hundred yards away from me. He'd told me to count down a couple of minutes and then we would open fire and almost sort of ambushed this herd. And I pulled the trigger for the first time on my weapon and I killed an animal. I saw it go down. And there was shock and surprise and there was a pungent smell of, you know, the gunpowder and also a screaming of that animal as well. And I was sort of frozen up as this 12-year-old. And then I saw dad just running down the hill like this New Zealand madman with his hunting smoke on and his weapon and his shoulder. And I realized I've got to do that too. So I ran down the hill and I was shooting these animals. One goat was still alive at the end. What did your dad want you to do? So dad said, you have injured this animal. This animal is in pain. You need to finish this animal. And I didn't want to. I could feel almost like a lump of fear and adrenaline coming up. Almost like I wanted to vomit. This was so extreme what I've been doing. It's this 12-year-old boy and he said, you have to finish this. And I said, no. And he said, this has to be done there and it was you're doing. So I pick up my rifle ready to shoot that animal and he said, no, no, not with a rifle with a knife. And this is the knife he's gifted to me. And that's the last thing that I want to do. But he sort of, with strength, but also with heart and with love, he says, you have to do this on. So I finished that goat with that knife. And we sit down and my chest is heaving and dad wipes and blood on my face and he says, you're a man now. Literally wiped blood across your cheek. Like a ride of passage. Did you and your family then eat the animals that you'd hunted that way? That particular day there were so many that we had shot, you know, tens and tens of animals. We brought some of those animals home, but we're 15, 20 kilometers from our car. So you bring some meat home and that goes into the freezer. We weren't a very well-off family. So that would usually the meat would be in the chest freezer for the next three or four months, which mum was thrilled about help the budget. Alongside hunting and being out in the bush, your parents were passionate about religion, Christianity. Where had they discovered Pintercostal Christianity? So they had fallen in love quite young and they did what a lot of New Zealanders in Australians do, which is they just packed up a backpack and they left and they went off to Europe and traveled. This is, you know, the late 70s. And in their travels in Greece, they actually, just because it was cheaper accommodation, they came across a hippie commune. But a hippie commune with a slight difference. They were very fervent Pintercostal Christians. And these were sorts of Christians who believed that they could pray for miracles. They could pray for food if they'd run out of food. And we've heard these stories, almost these family myths. My parents wouldn't say their myths. My parents would say, we saw this, this happened in where they would pray for fish. And thousands of fish would jump off the beach onto the sand or a gangster would come in to break up the commune and with a polio twisted leg and these Christians would pray for that gangster and his leg would untwist them right in front of their eyes. And these were stories that we heard as kids growing up of these miracles that mum and dad had seen as these hippies and backpackers. And it was like magic for us. So how did that faith, that version of Christianity show up in your day-to-day life as a family in New Zealand? We held hands every night and prayed. If something was happening at school, mum and dad would come in, tuck us in and pray for us. We followed the rules, the 10 commandments. We didn't swear. We didn't, you know, sexuality wasn't brought up. You would save yourself a marriage. We'd go to church on Sundays. And mum and dad were people of action. They didn't just want to go to church. They wanted everyone in New Zealand to know about Christ. Tell me then, Aaron, about a clown's mistake and what role it played in your childhood. A clown's mistake was this performance that had been done in America where a group of Pentecostal Christians would dress up as clowns and perform this show. So mum and dad got that vinyl record in the 80s and they just loved it. I couldn't believe how great it was. And they decided to buy a set of clown costumes. They built a little group of Christians who thought that maybe this was a good idea. And they would put the makeup on their faces and on Saturday mornings, our house would be full of clowns. You know, a dozen clowns. They would also recruit us. So we'd be dressed as clowns. We'd get into a van, which must have been a ludicrous site driving through Auckland. But then they would set up a small PA and they would perform a clown's mistake, which was this seven-minute performance about, it was a little scary. What was coming if you weren't a Christian and why Christ could save you from that? How did you feel about being involved in that as a kid? At the age, you know, you're five, six, seven. You just think that everyone does this kind of thing. Did you convert many New Zealanders with a clown's mistake? My parents tell me, I don't remember this, but they tell me about a miracle that happened where it was pouring with rain, which it often does in New Zealand. And the clowns got together and prayed. And this 90-foot circle of dry, sunny space opened up. Everyone ran into that miraculous little space and they performed clown's mistake and many people came to Christ that day. So again, one of these stories that we hear about as kids and go, that's true, isn't it? Is this happened? Your family left New Zealand for Australia and you joined the Australian Navy at 17. Were you big for your age? I was so skinny Sarah that I had to eat two double cheeseburgers to pass the way in, but rather percoach to say, I said to Mum, on the day I left Perth, we were living in Western Australia by then. I said, at the airport, Mum, I'm leaving a boy, but I'll come back a man. Well, I'm kind of like desperately trying to hold my heavy bags with my skinny arms. Well, those hamburgers worked and you made it in. How hard did you push yourself in your initial training? So what happened was I joined up with around 80 other officers, men and women. And towards the end of my officer training in Jarvis Bay, an instructor pulled me aside and said, you're very different from the other guys and girls on this course. You're always getting the trouble. And when we give you an eight-hour task to achieve, you're getting it done in 20 minutes because you're thinking of a strange way to solve the problem and then you're just resting for seven and a half hours. We think you might have what it takes to be special forces. So apples, my best mate and a guy called Kelle, he'd grown up in Port McCquarry. The three of us were sort of hand-picked for that world and that is the Navy diving world. It's a way from the regular Navy and that was what we were hoping for. That was the tough stuff. And what does tough stuff look like in Navy diving? The Navy, the clearance diving, as they were called then, now just Navy diving is the Navy seal branch, special forces. So these are some of the toughest fighting men in Australia and in the world, really. Side by side with the SES. So initially you begin with selection. It's just this three-week course to say, can you hold his own underwater? Is he fit enough to be for us to think about him and is he resilient and tough enough to push through what we're going to put ahead of him in the next few years? So I turned up to HMAS Penguin in Sydney and there's a lot of guys on course and they are big and strong and they're swearing a lot more than I am and their beards are long and they are tough. And there is this little 17-year-old still who's just finished this pretty underwhelming six months of officer training. And the goal is let's push you guys for the next three weeks and see who gets through. And was there any moment where you were unsure if you'd be able to take what they were giving you physically or emotionally? There's this saying that some fighting men will they will die before they are embarrassed. So they're so worried about not being tough enough or being embarrassed that there might be a coward that they're willing to die for that. And I'm in this environment where we're going from lots of guys you know 20, 30 guys that want to get through this course and then we're down to the final eight. By then my knees blowing out you know if we got any sleep I wake up and I would have black blood coming out of my nose and my ears what what from? Just my sinuses were just destroyed because you're in the water for 16 hours a day and when you're not in the water you're doing thousands of push-ups or you're running barefoot from HMAS Penguin to Manly and then you're swimming back they're just beasting you for weeks and weeks to see who's tough enough and playing mind games you know they say you guys are done really well take a break there's a big feast here so you eat the food and they go now eat up you know come you guys are deserved it and then you eat up and they go just kidding we're doing a 40 km run now so guys are throwing up and you learn to never trust the instructors because they're always messing with your head and absolutely I thought I can't get through this but I want to get through I want to be tough enough to be a Navy diver you were training in Sydney Harbour one cold night when you got the message underwater that there was an emergency what did you learn when you made it back to base so these are these we talk with a rope around our waist because it's pitch black you can't even see your hand up against your mask and a lot of your diving is at night times you have to get used to being in the duck and I felt these five pools and five pools is an emergency and we swim to the surface and the instructors are screaming at us to get out of the water so we put our fins in our teeth and we we're going up this ladder and still they're kind of screaming come on let's go let's go and we're thinking what is happening and we run past you know all the all these like torture devices they've put us through and we're thinking they're just trying to trick us again they're going to try to fail a few of us we're in the final hours of course I wonder who's going to fail I'm thinking maybe it's going to be me surely they've got some final trick that they're going to play that's just going to be so painful that I'm going to raise my hand and quit but there was no trick well you know we run into a room where the medic that was on duty was there and she has a small TV playing in the corner and we watch with horrors the second play and flies into the twin towers in New York was it clear right away in that room what it would mean for you and the other men not to me initially but they're one of the older guys said he was an instructor he'd served in war zones and he said man we're all about to go to war but I wasn't a man yeah I was 17 so were you thinking maybe I'm not going to be included in this I'm still training absolutely I was like there's no way they'll send me and I was frustrated by that I was like this has happened in my first year and I'm too young to go I'm too inexperienced like I've missed my shot but I got a text message to the next morning they let us go to sleep they they knew something big was coming we'd graduated with our final eight and I wake up to a text message on a mobile phone that I bought a month before the first of my life and a text message says get to King's Cross essentially you're joining HMS Sydney and you're deploying and my initial feeling was I couldn't believe it like I was so pumped so you you went that morning and boarded that HMS Sydney the warship Sydney how noisy was it on board yes there's 230 souls they call it on board they were women on board Sydney as well and this is a ship that is about to go to war and it's like a horn its nest is being kicked everyone knows their role so the weapons guys are literally loading ammunition on the helicopter guys are getting the helicopter's ready this was a ship that wasn't deploying in three weeks times the ship that would move off from the war by midday that day so everyone knows what they're doing except me I sort of get on board and go I've barely been on board a warship I've been in the diving branch and I'm they think I'm tough over there but they don't care about me here I'm a snotty a snotty yeah so snotty is what the British Navy and then the Australian Navy calls a midshipman so my rank was midshipman it is the lowest of the low technically the sail you outrank the sailors but everyone in the Navy knows that you outrank no one you're a snotty because you're so pathetic that you wipe your snotty nose on the sleeve of your jacket well this might have been the way you were being referred to Aaron but as you got underway with your training you were told that you were going to be joining something called the black team what did that mean what was the mission well I got told that on the first hour on board so I was piped which means an announcement was made midshipman take exos cabin and I'm thinking oh I thought I was going to be hidden away amongst the 230 people on board maybe I'll do some of my navigation training while I'm going up but I'm not going to do anything real and I get to the exos cabin and he's busy he's prepping a warship for war and he gives me about two minutes of his time and he says I'm joining black boarding team the second thing he says is go get a will because it's going to be very risky so black boarding team it started to become clear to us in the coming days was a team made up of 14 men mostly qualified special forces soldiers which I was not yet and our job would be to do essentially night raids on ships that were coming out of Iraq and there had been an embargo put on Iraq since go for one it had become lackluster it had become quite corrupt as well but as soon as 9/11 happened our mission was pretty clear like within 12 hours of what was going to happen ground trips are going to Afghanistan maritime forces would go to the Persian Gulf and enforce that sanction or that siege to the letter how were you supposed to be doing that that that became clear to us as we went up and we learned what it would mean to do night raids on a ship in the Persian Gulf at one in the morning and what it means is we're either going to be taking that ship by helicopter so 14 of us would be in a in a seahawk helicopter we would drop a 90 foot rope you're not clipped into that rope you're holding on and if you fall to the deck you'll probably die if you fall into the ocean you're probably drowned so either that's one of our ways to get on board the other way is a fast attack boat and we throw grappling hooks up with caving ladders and while that ship is underway going as fast as it can we're climbing up the side of the ship and taking taking control the smugglers on board those ships are trying to get oil out of a rock and sell on the black market they know we're coming they expect that we're coming it's our team a british marines team and a us navy sealed team so what they do is they're shutting their ship from the inside and locking it with padlocks they have false steering compartments or even if we get control of the bridge they'll be steering from somewhere else but the most frightening thing is they will have booby traps in the worst scenarios and the booby traps are there to blind us kill us blow our limbs off do everything they can to stop us taking control of their ship it's a very very tense diplomatic situation because you can only legally board the ship when it's in international waters and as soon as a smuggler knows that we're coming but here the helicopter or they see the boat they will as quickly as they can try to go back into the nation state waters of a nearby country if we're caught on board at that point where technically pirates how did your very first mission play out so the first mission you know I've just turned 18 by this point they made me a muffin and put a candle in it and I blew the candle out and you bomb up it's called which means you get into your outfit with our weapons so we have an ass pattern ideally we want to use that and that is a if you were to hit someone on the elbow would explode their elbow basically now we had a pistol some of us carried shotguns some of us had night vision goggles we've got tactical goggles helmets radios where we're pretty menacing sight when we're coming onto a ship of a smuggler and that first boarding is tense you know we we see that they've shut things up from the inside we see that they've they've got booby traps out and it's very very intense and you know I almost lost lost my life on that first boarding and then I come back from that and then you go out again the next night and the same thing happens and you keep doing this over and over and over again so after that first experience Aaron was it something you wanted to do again like that adrenaline that had been there in the lead up did that kind of play out in reality you know we're coming back from that first boarding and it's daylight by this point and the HMS Sydney its flag was a skull and crossbones so pretty pretty bad in the vibe as in like they wanted to be the tough guys the pirates in a way and as we're coming back we do a big loop around the ship and they they're bursting out you know across the loudspeakers across the Persian Gulf the song Bad to the Bone by George Thurgood and that I'm just like this is a movie like and I'm in it so this became your your new normal these night raids on on smuggler ships on on oil tankers how successful was your team incredibly successful far more successful in the US Navy seals and the British Marines interestingly for Australians we would get on board and the smugglers would be so impressed and overwhelmed but also terrified by what we had just done we come with helicopters and sparks and we've come in and taken control of those ships very aggressively and they would be fully expecting that we were going to kill them but we didn't need to kill them we didn't even need to injure them if we had control we had control so what we would usually do within the first 20 seconds of taking control is we would yell loudly Australian and we would lift up a Velcro patch showing the Australian flag and in a second it would diffuse all the tension because they were just so relieved there wasn't the Americans one night Aron you were sent to attack foul 12 one of the biggest smugglers in the Gulf tell me first of all about getting on board this huge tanker like what did it look like as you were approaching it by sea so foul 12 was the most notorious smuggler it had beaten many many boarding teams over the years it was kind of the the biggest prize if a team could get that they'd be the greatest team in the history of these sanctions and it was huge you know hundreds of meters long and we were getting briefings on it of all the booby traps that they had and everything that they were going to do to stop any team and we heard that foul 12 was on as a mission and we were nervous about that and we were waiting around for that and then they said it's a go so we're getting in that boat thinking we've survived so far but someone's probably going to be in trouble tonight so we're thinking maybe this is the night that we die what was it like for you getting on board this is past midnight as helicopters in the air we're in our faster take boats and we're going by grappling hooks and that's the that's the decided upon approach and we throw the grappling hook up it grabs onto a guardrail a wire and the first couple of guys start going up and then it's my turn to go up and I'm climbing up there and then the the cable ladder gets hooked on something and gets pulled away so I'm now holding on with all my gear a lot of heavy gear by my fingertips basically and I'm looking down at this very very tall ship that if I fall into that ocean it'll be a miracle if they ever find me I'll probably sink to the bottom of the Persian Gulf and I'm literally fingertips away from falling into that ocean and I screamed so my partner Crokes is an older guy very strong big man and he just reaches over and just literally throws like superhuman strength throws me onto the deck we were used to that we had life and death calls every single night but fell 12 was intense because that was just one of the moments on fell 12 there were there were more what happened once you were on deck so we run up where there's booby traps all over the deck that we're trying to avoid so there's they'll have hatches where if you step or not you fall into a tank of oil and you're drowning in the oil there's barbed wire everywhere there's all sorts of things going on and we run to the bridge my job was a cutter a job was to slice through the steel of the bridge doors using a laser cutter and then get inside or a broco cutter Crokes is trying to cut he's an engineer and I'm trying to find other ways in and I'm reaching in to try to frantically open doors and I'm getting hit by pieces of metal on my arms and and that's okay that's normal stuff and but as we're cutting we I look up and I see someone with a bucket of something and he pours it on top of croaks and I and this is an instant fire ball where enveloped in fire and we're confused for a second and we sort of fall sort of the floor and we're trying to put the fire out on us and and then I smell my uniform and it's it's fuel this guy has throw on a bucket of fuel and a 10 liters of fuel trying to trying to cook us and we can't touch that cutter again because if we do we'll go up in flames and I have sort of wide items saying to Crokes do not touch that cutter and all I want to do is find this guy and kill him because he's just come so close to killing me Aaron you're most dangerous mission was taking the ship val 12 what happened after surviving that attempt from the smugglers to set you and your partner on fire well we hear through our radios that we've gained entry into the ship someone's got in from the other side of the ship so we have to quickly change tack and we have to check our weapons are still there and we we run into the ship and then we're running through the ship and there's smugglers everywhere and there's more booby traps and it's dark and it's full on and and then we get into the I run to the bridge because I'm trained to a certain extent by then as an officer so I can take control and understand what's happening on the bridge and I take control of that ship we don't have control there's an alternate steering room where someone else has control but we're getting closer to oil rigs if we hit them we're going to die and then finally kind of we're lucky enough to take control and then we have val 12 it's the biggest ship in the history of those sanctions and the most dangerous mission we did for sure the next day you were sent back to that boat to val 12 to guard the crew those men who tried to set you on fire and kill you what did they look like to your 18-year-old eyes those men there was southern Asian crew members who just had a job they didn't know what they were part of but then the Iraqi crew in my mind they were terrorists they might be al-Qaeda they were smugglers that were the bad guys yeah they tried to kill us and they then said we need to do prayers and we said we can respect that and then they said well we need to make some food now so my officer lieutenant Hughes said Aaron you go and guard this cook while he makes some food for the crew so I was sent off just the two of us what kind of encounter did you and that man have well that first I was thinking if we go into a kitchen and he's got a knife there or something or some hot oil and he wants to take me on I will I will take him out I'm still angry and then he sort of says to me with broken English he actually reminds me of my grandfather the way he looks and and he says take a seat and I was like no I'm not taking a seat now I'm just like my hands near my weapon and I'm ready to go and he says what's going to take an hour to cook the bread in the tea so take a seat I'm like no and then 20 minutes later he's doing his thing and making his flatbreads and he says like do you want to help me and I go no I'm not going to help you and he says I can make some tea for you and I've been told in training they'll poison the tea they'll kill you and then I see him drink the tea he's like the tea is here if you want to take it so I sit down exhausted I kind of give in and then I actually reach across and start making some bread with him and then we just connect we just have a conversation not not the enemy and the fighter but an old man who looks like my grandfather and a young boy we just start talking and what did he tell you he asks what's going to happen to us now and I say I don't know that's not my I don't get involved in that but then he starts talking about what it's like in Iraq and what it's like in Iraq when these sanctions have been on them for so long but now we've like shut them down as in the country's getting almost nothing in and out he tells me that there's no food in the stores anymore there's no medicine in the pharmacies he tells me that it's people are dying that his family members are dying and they're not dying because of war they're dying because of starvation and I have this little moment of okay this is what I'm doing and the way he's talking about this country I'm making that a reality right now is that something you let yourself think more about at the time or just kind of put in the back of your mind I knew that we'd probably go out the next night for another boarding so I'm just thinking get some sleep get some food try to survive the next one so yeah it doesn't emerge immediately but it it's it's it puts itself in my soul somewhere your first year with a military count to an end and you flew back to Perth you know you'd said to your mum before you left I'm gonna be back man what happened when the two of you saw one another at the airport oh I saw her but she didn't see me she I see her with at the Perth airport and I go up to her and she looks straight past me she's looking for her son and and I sort of say hey mum it's me and she she keeps looking over my shoulder looking for her son and I've got my head shaved my skin is weathered scars on me and I probably got 10 kilos of muscle on me and she kind of her head like kicks back an inch and she's like oh there's my son right in front of me and she's like oh hey I like she turns into mum mode but yeah she didn't recognize me just for a moment and that boy had left and now there was this new man in front of her you were then off to the Defence Force Academy in Canberra how did you now this sort of decorated wall veteran at the ripe old age of 20 feel about living on campus and being a student I just wanted to get out of there like I I didn't want to be there I didn't know if I wanted to be in the military anymore the questions that Farouk this cook on board the ship had planted as a seed were growing and I'm studying economics and politics at university at the Defence Force Academy and then I'm going to you know shooting practice and jumping off buildings with absailing equipment and like all the things you do at the academy and I'm asking myself that mission that I was in can I can I hand on heart say that I would go back and do that and increasingly the answer is no and then I find a United Nations report that says 250,000 women and children died because of that mission and I I don't know what to do with that back then you didn't talk about all this with your mates in the Defence Forces but you did do a lot of drinking with them yeah you you drink a huge amount get into a fight I was still a virgin at this point so I'm not having no luck bring you go home but I'm quite intense at this age I'm an intense young man I'm going out and drinking I'm getting to a fight but I'm not hanging around to do some dancing I'm sort of leaving the bar to be honest I'm crying on the way home and I'm thinking like I was just going on who am I I don't want to be this person anymore I want to get away from this you lost a good friend in a car accident at this time to how were you starting to think differently about your own future or own legacy yeah I had this like fear that I was going to die young and I just wanted to live a full life and and yeah a very good friend he died we were all out drinking and he sat on the back of a taxi as it was driving away and he fell off and he hit his head and apples and I were there to keep him alive but ultimately he died in hospital and he died and we went to the funeral and everyone was sad and his mother was devastated we'll be for the rest of her life and then the next week people were like back at the bar and playing rugby and I went he's other than for a few people Trent will be forgotten and we'll all move on and we'll survive this crazy stuff in the Persian Gulf but he died falling off the back of a taxi and I had this feeling of this can't be my life I've got to go and live and fall in love and travel and have adventure and make a difference in the world like I can't see myself doing that in the military anymore you decided that you did want to see the world as a civilian not a soldier that you were still you know serving out your time with with the military why did you choose India as your first destination I had this growing desire around international development would be what you'd call it academically but helping the poor and coming up with economic ideas to help people and I've been reading about Bangladesh and Mohammed Yunus and microfinance and I saw STA travel existed back then the student travel and I saw that had this deal going to India so I said to apples hey don't go to India over the summer and it just felt interesting and exciting and and we headed off to India with a backpack each I think we brought three hundred dollars and we were going to do India by a third class sleeper train how comfortable was that I've met a lot of Indian sense who don't travel like that I was astounding just meeting Indians and they're telling about their lives and it's just brilliant what a country on another trip away from your training this time to Spain you fell madly in love with a young American woman Caitlin you eventually managed to find a way to be together firstly living in Sydney while you finished up your contract with the military you know you would have had such a big career ahead of you in the Navy did you have any qualms about deciding to walk away from that no I was counting the days it's sometimes it's prison language we talk about we're in but we're going to get out soon and I'll get out in two years and I got out but then I got back in and and yeah I was certainly thinking I've got a big life I want to live and and now I've met this incredible person as well you and Caitlin left Australia and landed in Kenya what were you hoping to do in Kenya we chose Kenya because we had I had 37,000 quantus freaking flyer points and I called quantus on a choose the afternoon Caitlin was off at work and said you can get me to Africa one way with that and they said we have Nairobi Christmas Eve do you want that I was like yeah I'll take it Caitlin came home that afternoon and I told her that I had booked my flight and I wanted if she wanted a book hers as well and we we decided we wanted to it was my time to leave the Navy I had served out my time we both studied a lot we had five degrees between us at that point so I had two masters degrees in international politics and international development she had a masters degree in international education and we were going to get finally go and help and we were young 24 years old we didn't have connections in this space we thought maybe we would be you know be easy to find a job with our degrees but we couldn't find those jobs from afar from Australia so we thought let's just get on a plane and Kenya is a nice easy way to start it's a relatively safe country and we'll go and volunteer at an orphanage just to find our feet so you've done a lot of academic study the both of you and you'd had all of your you know military experience but looking back are and how naive were the two of you in terms of this different space of development in international aid so naive you know we arrive in Kenya for a start and I think it's a nice safe country and and the country goes crazy the current president steals the election violence kicks off thousands of people are killed on the next few weeks and hundreds of thousands of refugees and we're right in the thick of that but occasionally we're going to the nearby town using a cyber cafe and we're sent we send a hundred emails out of his our CV we're great you should hire us no one responds and you know we've got our cold place CD in our walkman we've got our make poverty history bracelet on like we are like we have ready to save the world and no one wants to give us a job and then one group reaches out and they said we run a high school for at-risk kids in Tanzania and Aaron we love your leadership experience so I'm a 24 year old military officer and Caitlin we love your teaching experience now now Caitlin's done three weeks as a practical placement at Surrey Hills Primary School but they said come and run the school and we thought this is it this is our chance to run the school yeah come and run it and lead it and just transform it we we believe in you get yourself down to Dara Salam by bus and we'll meet you and this will be great we'll pay you a hundred dollars a month so what did you find once you arrived at the school that you and Caitlin were going to be in charge of so at the border between Kenya and Tanzania we finally get online and we google the place we're about to move to this township or slum by another word and we find that it has the highest rates of malaria in Africa we find that the life expectancy is 40 years old we find that they estimate half of the population in that township are HIV positive we get picked up by this American lady and she starts to tell us about the school that we're going to go and lead and transform as these 24 year olds and she tells us that the buildings are collapsing because they're full of white ants she tells us that the staff aren't turning up but when they do turn up their drunk she tells us that the best they've ever got is a student into grade 10 and we're thinking okay this sounds ominous already but we get diverted that first afternoon we're driving in a car out to the school and she gets a text message that one of the only boys who's come to school that day has actually beaten up the only drunk teacher who's turned up so we go and spend eight hours trying to get this boy out of jail and finally we're driving into the township it's dark there's no power there's no running water and I say to this American lady can you stay for another few days we don't we don't speak Swahili we've never run a school before you're leaving tomorrow this is a big handover we would love some support and she says talk to this boy and I look at this boy his name's Lasagio he's got blood all down his hand and he reaches out his bloody hand to me and he says Mr. Aaron sister Caitlin what would you like to know about the school because I'm the head boy so our first okay the best student we had with our first job was to get him out of jail was your enthusiasm being dented at all okay so you went in with this really strong vision of thinking we're going to make the kind of transformation and the change that we believe as possible with all the best intentions in the world how did that play out in reality we said we're going to get ten of these students into university this year we wrote it on the wall of our little shack with a sharpie that we had in the bag and then we got to work your life every morning we would play the best of in excess and Michael Hutchins would kind of fire us up for the day and we're like let's go for it and it's hard this is a very challenging place to live there's there's no clean water to drink there's no power everyone's getting malaria there's a funeral every week but we get to work and we know we're working seven days a week and we're waking up at six in the morning going to bed at midnight you know we're doing everything we possibly can for these kids and how did they respond so even six months in there's a whole bunch going well we've opened a library there's hundreds of kids coming to school every day so that's all the good stuff but there's also some real challenges you know in the first six months Kate and I had malaria each five times the police were investigating me not my American girlfriend they're investigating me because they thought I was an American spy the mayor had threatened that he would push me out of the township because he was not happy with what I was doing and I had eight curses on me from local witch doctors because every time I fired a drunk and late member of staff after their fifth warning they go and spend half their paycheck on a curse curse one two and three I was like guys you wasting your money and then all this bad stuff started happening I was like wow the curses I think they hold some weight but then it I felt like because I had the military training I could keep going that it was a worthy fight we're doing this with the right intentions we've been told to transform the school we're going to get 10 kids into university it was going to be a beacon of hope for the whole township like I was waking up every morning in excess on let's go every single day and the military had taught me to do that but then it got to a point where I lost the students and that was they were the reason I kept going but then I realized that I'd lost them what do you mean you lost them so one afternoon I could see Caitlin teaching 80 kids in her class I'd finished for the day with my students and I see the last teacher we have left compass his name's Peters local guy lovely guy brilliant I invite him into our house and we sit down we have a cup of tea and I'm just talking about I'm trying to motivate him like I would do with a sailor when I was in the military and he interrupts me and he says Aaron you need to leave I said we're not leaving we're going to get this done 10 kids are going to university because of this school and he interrupts me again he says you need to go now I was like hey Peters what's happening he said I heard a bunch of the young men talking about you this afternoon and what's going to happen is when it gets dark and they're the tough ones and we know some of them carry weapons they're going to come to your house and in front of Caitlin they're going to kill you why I didn't know yet but I was I've put everyone offside but I'm still in my head fighting the noble fight like I'm coming to fix this place and no one's done it so far but I'll get the job done so he tells me this and so I said to Peters Caitlin's coming out of class now can you just make sure she's safe she comes out of class I give her a kiss on the cheek and I said Peters wants to have a meeting with you maybe go have a cup of tea with him somewhere and I find Miss Angi the oldest boy and I ask him to get all the young men into a room before anyone goes anywhere so the end of the day and we go into this room and it's a room we've built together there's posters on the walls that we've drawn up together and I ask Miss Angi to latch the door shut so we're locked in there together about 50 of us and I stand up in front of them and I say now the rumor is that you want to kill me tonight well I don't want Caitlin to see that happen so try to kill me right now instead what happened well thank goodness none of them moved but I I'm furious at this point and I'm 25 some of them are in their early 20s and they're tough a teacher had been killed at a school down the road the month before because the students had all failed the exam and they a group of the students had murdered him that night and they'd been caught and they were in jail and I thought at that point they're still going to come at me but I'm yelling at them and I say we talk about being men of courage and men of honor do this thing don't just gossip about it and I look around the room and I see confused faces young boys and men thinking what is he talking about and then I see a group in the corner and they hate me they hate me I've never experienced that before as a leader in the military the boys wanted to be in my team because I looked after them and I'd listen to them and here I'd got it so wrong now I've never got it this wrong before as a leader so I apologized I said I'm so sorry what were you apologizing for what did you got wrong I'm clearly failed here and I don't know why so I had a bit of chalk left and I said I'll give you the chalk now and I'm going to sit quietly to the side and tell me everything I've done that makes you so angry that you want me dead and they did for three hours they did and the core of it was Aaron you came into our place and it was your vision and your ideas and your goals and you never listened to us and you just pushed us and pushed us and pushed us but you don't care what we think you don't care about us and I learned the most powerful lesson of my life that day which is the only thing more powerful than ownership is authorship like I came into their place I came up with the plan and then I was angry when they wouldn't do it so I let them take over Caitlin did the same thing with the girls at night they said a bigger vision for the school than we'd ever set bigger goals than we'd ever set they set tougher rules on themselves than we'd ever set and now it was on their terms and they took over the school so it ended up being a success not in the way that you'd envisaged but in a way that was right for that community what did you and Caitlin end up deciding was the most effective way to try and support change in the developing world after your time in Africa you left you did further study and and then where did you put your energy it was to back local change very simple back the people with a lived experience the problem they're trying to solve I went to Cambridge University I wrote a thesis on that to give it the kind of credibility and academic level and then we came back to Australia with a group of friends we launched a nonprofit that would back local entrepreneurs and so on the most challenging markets on earth and so we got to work I we had seven degrees between this at that point Kate and I moved back to Sydney she was a nanny during the day and she would work on the nonprofit at night I was a bar tender at the opera bar with my Cambridge degree and I would work there at night and I'd work on the nonprofit during the day so you and Caitlin put everything into building this NGO not for profit you'd gone in with the intention of doing good did it have the effect for you personally that you wanted that work to do Aaron as well as the good it was doing in the wider world I was still carrying a lot from the Persian Gulf and from that mission this 250,000 number was in my head I had to help as many people as that number I had to do good for that many people and when I left Tanzania in the last night that I was there a young man who had changed his life his name's Frank and as we were packing up our things he sort of came out of the darkness and he said thanks for changing my life Aaron and Caitlin and by the way Aaron you're forgiven now I said what do you mean and he said you know what I mean and he walked into the darkness so that was huge for me this street kids just saw straight into my soul and just said you're forgiven but I still had this this burden so I said if I'm going to go and start something a nonprofit that I'll be part of with the team of people but it leads needs to help at least 250,000 people and that organization went on to change lives of 1.6 million people and still exists today doing astounding things around the world backing these incredible local entrepreneurs you've always been such a driven kind of person it seems what's the motivation in your life now so we built the nonprofit out and I also built a business out that we ran for 10 years it was a we helped teachers transform their schools it was a face-to-face education company during the COVID pandemic we actually built a technology idea to survive as a business which essentially became Netflix for teacher training we sold that to a business in Australia could go one a technology unicorn from Brisbane so at the end of that decade why gap was thriving and I had a lightness about me of I can forgive myself now we had a level of wealth that came from selling a business that was crazy for me to get my head around because I didn't drop with that my family didn't have that kind of money and then I actually was thinking what's next and I I went and did in a ayahuasca ceremony which is a very potent psychedelic plant-based medicine and I went into that with the intention of I'm going to take this psychedelic and reflect on the last big 20 years and think of what's next for our intake and I had my ass kicked and I left that experience like it's one of those profound experiences of my life and I left that thinking number one I'm a dad and a husband and number two I want to be a writer so that's what I do now I'm a father and a husband and I write your two boys are still young do you talk about your military service with them at all we have no guns in the house no GI Joe's we don't watch war movies we don't read war books the medals come out every ANZAC day for an hour and then they get put away in the tin they're curious about it they're five and eight and their boys and they have this spirit about them if they choose to join the military one day it won't be because of the way we've raised them I don't think it'll be hard for Caitlin to accept if they join the military but she would let them do it I sometimes think if they say to me as a 17 year old I want to join up dad the way that I answer that question is if I could go back in time and see Aaron at the airport as a 17 year old what would I tell him and what I would say to him is I'm not going to tell you anything you got to live it all yourself Aaron thank you so much for being my guest on conversations thank you for having me Aaron Tates Memoir is called Far Horizons a journey from war to peace this conversation was produced by ours Moldovan and recorded on the lands of the Terrible and Jaggera peoples our executive producer is Nicola Harrison I'm Sarah Kanoski it's great to be back with you for 2026 and thanks for listening you've been listening to a podcast of conversations for more conversations interviews please go to the website abc.net.au/conversations [BLANK_AUDIO]