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159 turns · 1 hr 36 minDavid Knopf. David's international career has taken him across the globe, including service as an officer in the Australian Army, diplomatic postings in Pakistan and Iraq, and most recently with the Australian Antarctic Program.
Sometimes with diplomatic service, people will have this image of you sort of, at a cocktail party or sipping lattes on the Champs-Élysées, sort of saying a desolée about the submarines, Pierre. But that's part of it, and that happens at the embassy, Paris and London and these lovely locations. But for me and so many others, diplomacy meant wearing body armour and a helmet right alongside troops in the middle of war zones. War is not just about soldiers killing bad guys or bad guys trying to kill you. That is a huge part of it, and it's a very dangerous part of it. But there's so much more to it in terms of, well, how do you actually track down these people? What do we do with them when they get captured? What do we do, like the whole ISIS brides thing and other stuff that's come up now? There's so many layers to war, and it's something that you can't ever – you could read every book, watch every movie, listen to every podcast, do everything. You'd never quite get a sense of, well, what is it actually like when you're over in those places living and breathing it?
Do you remember when you were, I don't know how it was communicated to you, but when someone said, hey, look, David, we don't know if we can get you guys home.
Yeah, no, I remember that well. 23rd of June, 2020, with an online meeting with Kingston, the ops manager back there just sort of said to me, hey, due to a whole range of operational reasons, we've had to change the shipping schedules and the flight schedules and these different things. So your team's going to have to stay at least another six months and we'll work out a plan in due course as to how we'll get you home. And It hit like a ton of bricks to me to just be like, you've got to be kidding me. You can't just compulsorily extend this. And what we were unsighted on, which became the real challenge, is that you might be fine with it, but what about your life back home? That is absolutely not going to be fine with all of a sudden you're now staying another Christmas, another summer, another birthday, another New Year's. So that caused a fair bit of grief. for a number of individuals on the other end. And it certainly led to the breakup of a few relationships and other things that happen in life, but are all that more difficult when you're in the circumstances we were in.
Welcome to the One True Measure podcast. I'm your host, Blake O'Connell. Today, like all weeks, we really dig into this concept of success and this really clear focus on One True Measure. It is an individual journey towards defining success in your life. And this week, we're talking to a gentleman about his very varied life experience from leading Australian soldiers to to acting as a diplomat, to leading and surviving in the harshest place on earth. Welcome, David Knopf.
G'day, Blake. Yeah, thanks for having
me on. Beautiful, mate. How is the Paris of the South today, mate? Have you heard Melbourne referenced as the Paris of the South?
Episode notes
In 2007, as an infantry platoon commander, David served in the Solomon Islands, which began a lifelong career in international relations. Following this, David began working with Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. He was soon overseas on his first Diplomatic posting to the Australian High Commission, Islamabad, at the height of the international coalition’s efforts to bring stability and peace to Afghanistan and Pakistan. David then went on to work as part of the international coalition to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Iraq.
In 2019, David was given a leadership challenge unlike any other in modern history, as the Station Leader at Davis Station, Antarctica, he was leading a team of just 24 through the isolation of an Antarctic winter when the COVID-19 Pandemic broke out. The impact of the pandemic on Antarctic operations saw David's team without a ride home as planned and facing one of the longest periods of isolation in modern Antarctic History.
David's book, '537 Days of Winter: Resilience, Endurance and Humanity while stranded in Antarctica during the Pandemic' tells the story of what it was like to lead a team through unprecedented uncertainty and how to find resilience in the most extreme environments.
Combining his experiences from war zones and his six different Antarctic expeditions, David now works as a professional