Glenn Jarvis

So consumer is what they call a person with mental illness in the health service.

So I applied and I got it, which was a big surprise to me that I got that job.

Yeah, I worked for five years as a consumer advocate.

That was fantastic for me.

Well, the thing I like about Queanbeyan is that you can trust your mates in Queanbeyan and it is a bit of a smaller life in some ways.

Not so many holidays in Europe and things like that.

But the south coast is just down the road, which is probably one of the nicest places on the planet.

And...

Yeah, I really enjoyed trying to help people with mental illness.

As a consumer advocate, it was kind of difficult because you're stuck in this position where the mental health service, they want to provide a crisis management service,

The consumers or people with mental illness want a more therapeutic, holistic service.

So that was difficult, but I did have a few wins in my advocacy days.

Yeah, well, I suppose you might have gathered from my uni days and all my stories of Enron that I'd always liked to be.

And there happened to be this bolo straight across the road from the supported accommodation, so I used to go over there with another resident.

And I was just feeling, although I really had that connection with the other people with mental illness, I couldn't sit around in that yard and talk about...

community treatment orders and medication for the rest of my life so I went over there and there was an older fellow who really liked to drink who just decided that I seemed to be like a reasonable fellow even though a lot of people were saying oh here's this fellow with mental illness and yeah he started talking to me and that kind of led to another person started talking to me and

Then gradually I saw a fellow in there with a squash track suit on and he actually lives with me at the moment.

But he said, well, come and play comp squash with me.

So I ended up playing comp squash and it kind of snowballed.

So I had my friends at The Bowler and then friends at Squash and I'm still good friends with a lot of those people now.