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Artwork for beer with Duncan by Duncan Schieb
beer with Duncan by Duncan Schieb · September 11 · 41 min

Untitled

Cathy Hockey was a bit of a rebel. She left school at the end of Year 10, walked into a bank as a junior, rang her best friend to report that she had her own paperclips, and was managing the Neutral Bay branch by twenty-five. Then kids, part-time work, no way back to a manager's job, and a swap to architectural drafting. Then another swap, to conservation and land management. And in 2008, a phone call about a pilot nobody had built yet. That pilot became Bushlink: real, paid work for people with disability, regenerating the bush right here on the Northern Beaches. In her first weeks, she watched six people put on a uniform and show up, and she has never argued about the value of work since. The one contract they had ended almost immediately, and she spent years knocking on doors, chasing grants and asking at the sideline of her kids' soccer. Almost two decades on it is still going, and some of the team have been there since the very beginning. She went on to run the Windmill program at Royal Far West in Manly, then took the chief executive's chair at an NDIS provider through the most uncertain years the scheme has had. Three days in, she caught COVID in a disability service, and her first thought was not for herself. Then she stepped out of the chair to do something quieter, and now she coaches the leaders still in it, so they can keep going without burning out. In this hour, Duncan asks where her belief in the dignity of work was born, about the first time she watched somebody stand taller because they had a job, about the real weight of the chair, and the question she asks every leader she coaches, turned back on her: who holds you? And near the end, he asks what she would say to a listener who is running on empty and carrying everyone. Her answer is the reason this show exists. beerwithDuncan doesn't just tell other people's stories. It changes the way you see your own

0:00-41:44

transcript

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show notes

Cathy Hockey was a bit of a rebel. She left school at the end of Year 10, walked into a bank as a junior, rang her best friend to report that she had her own paperclips, and was managing the Neutral Bay branch by twenty-five.

Then kids, part-time work, no way back to a manager's job, and a swap to architectural drafting. Then another swap, to conservation and land management. And in 2008, a phone call about a pilot nobody had built yet.

That pilot became Bushlink: real, paid work for people with disability, regenerating the bush right here on the Northern Beaches. In her first weeks, she watched six people put on a uniform and show up, and she has never argued about the value of work since. The one contract they had ended almost immediately, and she spent years knocking on doors, chasing grants and asking at the sideline of her kids' soccer. Almost two decades on it is still going, and some of the team have been there since the very beginning.

She went on to run the Windmill program at Royal Far West in Manly, then took the chief executive's chair at an NDIS provider through the most uncertain years the scheme has had. Three days in, she caught COVID in a disability service, and her first thought was not for herself. Then she stepped out of the chair to do something quieter, and now she coaches the leaders still in it, so they can keep going without burning out.

In this hour, Duncan asks where her belief in the dignity of work was born, about the first time she watched somebody stand taller because they had a job, about the real weight of the chair, and the question she asks every leader she coaches, turned back on her: who holds you?

And near the end, he asks what she would say to a listener who is running on empty and carrying everyone. Her answer is the reason this show exists.

beerwithDuncan doesn't just tell other people's stories. It changes the way you see your own