Steve Matthews didn't know it at the time, but he was sleepwalking into a crisis.
The 1990s had seen several good years for the fifth-generation sheep and grain farmer.
He'd "topped the local lamb market" in Wagga Wagga in southern NSW, grown record crops, and even expanded to run a medium-sized transport company.
Then came the Millennium Drought.
"Like all younger fellas, I probably thought I was 10-foot tall and bulletproof," Mr Matthews said.
"Until the drought came along, and things went pear-shaped and I found out I wasn't."
Impacts of drought
Mr Matthews hadn't even contemplated his mental health before the drought.
But as crops started to fail, water allocations dropped to zero, and his transport business ground to a halt, things started to catch up with him.
"I probably brought about my own downfall in a lot of ways in that I didn't seek help for either myself or the business in time," he said.
"Eventually the pressure got too much and I had a major breakdown, which resulted in being institutionalised for a few months."
But it didn't end there.
Mr Matthews had been misdiagnosed with severe depression and put on a course of medication that wasn't working for him.
"With a combination of the two, my mental health went downhill again to the point where I became suicidal," he said.
"I actually frightened the crap out of myself when I came to my senses a bit.
"And that's when I took control of my own treatment."
Going bush
Mr Matthews started working with a new psychologist, was correctly diagnosed with bipolar, and started on a course of medication that worked.
He also turned to bush regeneration.
In bits and pieces, he started to fence off pockets of his 1,000-hectare property at Lockhart and direct seeding native plants.
"It was a great distraction," he said.
"It gave me something else to focus on other than myself, my mental health, and the drought."
The project aimed to revegetate farmland on the property to allow for the planting and growth of native trees like grassy box woodland and Murray pines.
With a focus on a creek that runs through the property, Mr Matthews' efforts have seen biodiversity return to the land.
What used to be barren paddocks visited only by sheep have now become oases, with dense tree lines grouping around the regenerated creek.
"It now actually dominates the farm in that from virtually any point of the farm you see it, and it has barely affected our productivity.
"If you're having a tough day, it's really nice just to go into the bush."
On top of the environmental benefits, Mr Matthews said the revegetation has filled him with a sense of pride.
"In that tough time, I actually made something happen," he said.
"I think it's probably my proudest achievement in all my years on the farm."
The road to recovery
Over his 17-year journey since the drought began to change his life, Mr Matthews has seen the benefits of confronting his mental health struggles.
He's now an advocate for farmers to be more open about their struggles.
"I lost 10 years of life to that to the bloody illness," he said
"I've learnt along the way that talking is a great way of helping get through a problem.
"Farmers don't do it enough. We live on our own, we work on our own, we hardly get out a lot of times because of work pressures."
He sees his recovery mirroring the recovery of his farmland through revegetation.
"It's probably in a lot of ways coincidental, but they've nearly followed each other year by year.
"And now, I've come out of that dark time and I now see that something that I can look back and say well, it wasn't that dark after all."
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