Craig Semple was a detective in the NSW Police Force for 25 years, investigating homicides, outlaw motorcycle gangs and other serious crimes. In 2012 he was medically retired after burnout and stress pushed him down a hole that took years to climb out of.
But climb out he did, and now Craig is sharing his story at mine sites, delivering mental health first aid courses and using his expertise to help create mentally healthy and resilient workplaces.
Before he found himself at the NSW Police Force Academy, and graduating as the youngest probationary constable at just 19 years old in 1988, Craig’s Pop got him a job at the BHP Steelworks in Newcastle.
“It was a hot, dusty and dirty business and every afternoon I would clear my sinuses, ear and throat of black coal dust.
“BHP had turned out to be more than just a fill-in job for me. I learned some very important life lessons, and for the rest of my life I have remembered the old blokes I worked with, those in their sixties who had put in over forty years of hard toil and were nearing their retirement and would check their watches, all day, every day,” Craig said.
“I made a vow then to never have a job where I willed away the hours, days, weeks and years.”
Craig was accepted into the Academy, spent 12 weeks learning everything he needed to know and started his first job on the beat in Redfern.
He spent five years there in uniform and plain clothes.
“I loved having jobs that weren’t just putting in the report at the end of the shift and that’s it. I loved having something to follow up and that investigative side of the job really appealed to me. I loved fishing and hunting, being investigative is hunting down bad people.”
Craig then found himself as the sole detective in Hay NSW, thrown in the deep end taking charge of his first homicide before he was even a qualified detective. Three years in Hay, and then it was onto the drug squad in Wagga Wagga, then Grafton and Coffs Harbour.
For Craig, crime seemed to follow him.
“I was three months into my time in Hay and they had a murder and they hadn’t had one for 20 years, at Wagga there was a two year period between 1998 – 2000 when they had 12 murders, when I moved to Coffs Harbour there were things up there that had never happened like our detective Christmas party being attacked by a bikie gang. It was a bit bizarre!
“But I loved the excitement and the danger and I got addicted to it.”
How did Craig deal with all those confronting, all-consuming situations? Beer.
“The drinking culture at the start of my career was so different to the one I ended it with. At the start it was fun and you’re sharing stories with each other, but so many years down the track in my career I was doing it to numb things out. I would go home and drink to survive, and to sleep.
“Our workplace culture was one where you were expected to be tough enough to deal with anything, and it is hard to let that go which is one of the main reasons alcohol became how I dealt with it.”
In 2012 Craig finished one of the biggest investigations of his career that turned out to be his last. A huge investigation into the Lone Wolf bikie gang in Coffs Harbour over 18 months had Craig, as the Commander, working 24/7.
“We shut down a whole chapter of a bikie gang and at the time it was one of the most successful organised crime jobs ever done in regional NSW. But I felt no pleasure and no sense of euphoria from it.
“For the next four weeks I deteriorated so quick there was nothing I could do to stop it.”
Craig broke down at home, one of his managers and best mates convinced him to take some time off. He never set foot in a police station as an officer ever again.
As well as the PTSD, Craig was also diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder.
“For the next three years I was in the hurt locker, I was plagued with suicide which is something that really scared me because as a detective one of my jobs was investigating suicides, nearly all of them were blokes. Men are way overrepresented when it comes to suicide, it’s like 3 out of 4 which is one of the reasons why I do so much in the mining industry because there are so many men in that industry. I didn’t want to be one of those statistics but there I was thinking about it,” Craig said.
Craig ran his recovery like he would run a police investigation, and he came out the other side. But the recovery journey is something he is always working on.
In 2015 Craig joined the Black Dog Institute as a mental health educational presenter and a year later was selected as a mentor for the NSW Police Legacy program ‘Backup for Life’.
Before he knew it Craig was in a new career he never could’ve imagined.
He started his own business, Mentality Plus Workplace Mental Health Training and Consultancy, providing practical mental health training for staff and leaders.
One of his main goals? To increase help seeking.
“I don’t try to talk down toughness, particularly with coal miners, it’s a tough job and it has a culture of toughness, and I think we should embrace that. But part of that culture should be accepting when you’re vulnerable and you need help.
“We put our car in for a service, so the engine doesn’t blow up. We have to do that with our mind as well.
“Older miners often still have those generational attitudes towards mental health and probably base a lot of their outlooks on past experiences.
“That can create a distorted perception about how conversations will be perceived.
“For example, I finished a talk and an employee came up to me in tears, they were in a world of hurt. He said, ‘mate there’s no way I would tell my manger because they would put me off the tools and my job is the only thing keeping me going’.
“I said to him, ‘have you got evidence to back that up from past experience?’ and he said ‘no we all just know’ and I told him ‘let’s put it to the test, I’ll come with you and see your manager and we’ll have a chat and see what happens’.
“We had a chat and all that individual got was massive loads of support.
“I followed it up and they were really well supported.
“We’ve changed a lot in the way we are approaching this stuff. It’s one experience like that at a time that changes the culture moving forward.”
