1. Name, age, location?
Luc Longley, 46, Denmark, Western Australia.
2. What do you do?
Sometimes I’m a basketball coach, sometimes I’m an environmental campaigner, sometimes I’m a vegetable grower, sometimes I’m a consultant, or a businessman. I’m a hat juggler.
3. What would you rather be doing?
What I do is a complicated ruse that means I don’t have to connect to any one thing. I do miss the singular focus of having a mission, where you have something you’re becoming very good at or driven by, which I had with basketball, but I’ve chosen to have a quiver of arrows rather than a bazooka. I’ve got a whole range of small things that I really enjoy and I haven’t found something I want to point a bazooka at yet.
4. How have you changed in the last five years?
I’ve slowed down; I’ve become less reactive; a little bit fatter.
5. Who do you look up to?
I look up to the bloke who doesn’t have to look up to anyone. I don’t know who he is, so that’s a problem. I try not to get fixated on one person but I admire a man named Phil Jackson, who’s my old coach at the Bulls.
6. How do you look after yourself?
By having diversity in what I do. I try and eat wholefood, get exercise every day, make good decisions for myself. By living in the bush, staying away from traffic, crowds, congestion and people; I find that’s good for me. And by having varied interests; it gives my brain things to chew on.
7. Do you think men need to moisturise?
I didn’t think so until about two years ago, until I started getting old man eczema. I don’t think that’s actually a thing, but when you get older your skin starts to get dry and rash up, and be more reactive to things. So: yes.
8: What do you care about?
I care about my children and my wife. I care about the ocean. I care about the environment. I care about the Dockers. Don’t put that in.
9. What don’t you care about?
So much. I don’t care about social media and I don’t care about pop culture.
10. How important is honesty to you?
There’s truth and lies, and that’s honesty in its basic format; but honesty beyond that is what I care about. The things that don’t get said often do the most damage. When people are honest and brave enough to speak about the things that are important, then honesty is very important in that capacity. When I was a young man I was so careful not to hurt anyone’s feelings that no one knew where they stood. I was too busy protecting people from anything awkward, negative or difficult; that’s dishonesty in my mind. I lost a marriage that way.
11. When was the last time you were wrong?
This morning I was having a surf and went left instead of right. I got absolutely punished. Then the next wave, I went right instead of left and got punished that way, so I was wrong twice. I learned my lesson then got punished for that, and I still have salt water leaking out of my nose to prove it.
12. What’s the most brutal truth you’ve faced?
That the earth is dying, that’s the most brutal truth. Half the world lives in poverty; that’s pretty brutal.