Show Notes
This week Knuckles sits down with Michael Crossland, one of Australia’s most in demand inspirational speakers, who made the trip up from Coffs Harbour to share the parts of his story he never tells on stage. Fair warning, Knuckles was in tears two minutes in, and this is only part one.
Diagnosed at 11 months old with stage four neuroblastoma and sent home with a 96 per cent death rate, Michael’s life was shaped by his mum’s decision to see it as 4 per cent full instead of 96 per cent empty. Chemo started on his first birthday. Then came the 11 hour train rides between Sydney and Coffs Harbour, an 11 kilo tumour wrapped around his heart, and his mum carrying him into surgery because the doctors told her it might be the last time she held her little boy alive.
When the treatment stopped working, the family signed onto an experimental drug being trialled on 25 kids around the world. Within a day they were all in the burns unit, wrapped in bandages and laid in ice baths, burning from the outside in. Within 90 days, 24 of the 25 were gone. Michael was the only survivor, and he’ll tell you he’s one of the lucky ones, not because he lived, but because he wasn’t his mum.
Find Michael’s speaking work and his bestselling book Everything Will Be OK at michaelcrossland.com
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More from Proper True Yarn
Buster Kirby is back on the pod, and the last time he and Knuckles recorded together was in New Zealand, followed by an after party at Rock 2000 in Auckland where a mate stripped off to reveal a tribal tramp stamp on an angle. These days Buster is 45, living in the hills behind Byron near Nimbin, and has made a pact to go 10 years hard on the comedy before building a big fence around the farm at Tyalgum and raising cows. He also married his third cousin. They checked with Aunty Ollie, the family oracle, who reckoned they were related "sort of, but not close enough". Then come the wedding yarns. At Buster's own wedding in the Catholic church at Murwillumbah, the priest was his wife's uncle, Father Paul, who asked best man Pig to get rid of his chewing gum. Pig gobbed it straight into the priest's hand and said "thanks bud". Knuckles tops it with his farm wedding: one of the bridesmaids got so smashed she spewed, shat and pissed through the motorhome he'd organised for the night, then passed out with the door locked. He and his new wife spent their wedding night in winter on a bare bed with no linen, and a couple of weeks later he got a $180 cleaning bill. Buster never gets asked to be a groomsman, he's always the MC, "because I'm the fat, loud guy". At his best mate Clancy Fallon's wedding up at Midginbil Hill behind Uki, Wendell Sailor turned up. Buster grabbed the mic, told 200 guests how nervous he was to be standing in front of his childhood hero, a bloke who could score from anywhere on the field, and asked everyone to put their hands together. Del stood up. Buster said "Ryan Hansen", a Q Cup second rower and goal kicker. Del sat straight down, ropeable, then copped a second one when Buster introduced Lote Tuqiri. He eyeballed Buster for an hour, then walked over with two glasses of champagne. ⚠️ Explicit content. Catch Buster Kirby on his comedy tour.
Part 4 with Jack from Bellmere Butcher, wrapping up the series. First things first: the shop is at 65 Bellmere Road in the heart of Bellmere, near Caboolture. It's a back to front shopping centre, so Jack is working on a giant sausage sign for the street so nobody drives past. Jack's grown up around food, his parents ran Italian restaurants in town, and after 10 years inside the same four walls of less than 50 square metres, the new shop is how he keeps himself and his team interested. New creations are on hold until they've got the room to make them properly every day, not as a one off. Hot food is coming too, but no menu: whatever's in the hot box is what's available. No pies either, out of respect for the baker in the same centre. The bigger plan is weekend smokers out the front with taste testers and advice, the same thing Jack does at home when 30 or 40 people turn up on a Sunday with the kegs on. His line is that it's not butchers against butchers, it's butchers against the big guys. To prove it, he and the butcher up the road have a golf buggy challenge running, and he's been called out to a go kart race on the other bloke's property. Loser donates to charity. ⚠️ Explicit content. Find Bellmere Butcher at 65 Bellmere Road, Bellmere, and keep an eye out for the new shop opening.
Part 3 with Jack from Bellmere Butcher. Knuckles asks why the self proclaimed sausage king has never entered the sausage awards. Jack actually signed up this year, membership and all, then the reminder email landed and he saw what it takes: every sausage in every category, every ingredient listed, made, cryovaced and shipped by a deadline. With 12 staff jammed into a shop under 50 square metres, it's a job for next year. His figures don't lie and he's got nothing to prove. Knuckles just wants to know who cooks them, because one bad cook could wreck the best snag in the comp. On beef, Jack has been loyal to Nolan's since he was a first year apprentice, the kind of supplier who'll sort him out on a Sunday when someone else has left him stranded. Reps are welcome to leave a price list, but he's not changing for a dollar a kilo. Knuckles backs it, saying the best eating beast he ever shot was a dirty old Jersey, not a pretty Angus heifer. The new shop gets a walk in butcher's vault with a block where Jack will cut your meat in front of you. Then Knuckles asks how to pick a good chook, and Jack tells him what a bad one looks like. Cornish Cross birds, full white with blue eyes like a sci fi clone movie, six kilos in about four months, some so heavy they can't walk, and some growing two extra legs out their backside. Knuckles reckons breed the four legged ones and sell more drumsticks. ⚠️ Explicit content. Get into Bellmere Butcher, 65 Bellmere Road, Bellmere.
Part 2 with Jack from Bellmere Butcher, and this one's all snags. Jack had Facebook for Marketplace and nothing else until Blake, a meat marketing bloke, talked him into a month of videos. The first few were average. Then they filmed a sausage he'd dreamt up during COVID called the Counter Lunch: rump steak, hot chips and pepper gravy. Over 3 million views on the first proper video. The comments went both ways and Jack couldn't care less, but Megan lost three days of sleep trying to reply to every one. Knuckles reckons the keyboard warriors are doing him a favour, every bad comment just pushes it further. What mattered was the door: every bugger walking in wanted rump steak, hot chips and pepper gravy sausages. Twelve months on, they've dropped a new flavour every single week, over 100 of them. Jack explains what goes on behind it. Gravy made days ahead, $500 a week on hot chips with no margin in it, people driving six hours through the night and turning up to a window that only fits eight to 10 flavours. His plea: ring ahead and they'll make it for you. The new shop should take it to 20 or 30 flavours with its own kitchen and chefs. His favourite? He eats that many he goes back to a plain snag, but right now he's on a jalapeño craze, especially the pork jalapeño ones made for Alpha Fest. ⚠️ Explicit content. Follow Bellmere Butcher for the weekly sausage drop, and if you're travelling, ring ahead.
Part 1 with Jack from Bellmere Butcher. Two weeks out from opening his new shop, Jack had his tradie mates (mostly cousins and family) knocking off with beers at 2.30 on a Friday, trying to come up with a yarn he could actually tell on this show. Then a little Kia pulls up in the middle of six blokes and a lady in her 80s gets out, looks at the sign and goes, "not the Bellmere Butcher", she was hoping for a Domino's. The boys couldn't help themselves. His cousin the sparky asks if she shops there. Never, she's Woolworths and Aldi all the way and can't afford it. She reckons the new owner is spending big on that stone wall, the old guy was a legend, and she doesn't know how this new bloke makes a living. Jack, sitting there in full Bellmere Butcher uniform, agrees with every word. His mate in the Bellmere Butcher hat tells her he had to knock it off because the tight arse owner wouldn't give him one. She never clicked. Then the real story: 10 years ago Jack was picking up cars along Bribie Island Road, kept driving past an apprentice wanted sign at the Ningi butcher and finally walked in. He did his trade there, met his partner Megan when she was the counter girl at Bellmere, managed the shop for years, then walked away when their daughter arrived eight weeks premature. A phone call to his old boss, now his best mate, and two weeks later he owned the place. Three years on, he's known as the sausage man. ⚠️ Explicit content. Get down to Bellmere Butcher at 65 Bellmere Road, Bellmere, and tell them the old girl sent you.