But overcoming challenges isn't a new feat for David. Back in the early 2000s when he was based in Afghanistan the Aussie aid worker was forced to negotiate with the Taliban and Al Qaeda to truck in emergency equipment needed to save the lives of thousands of women and children in remote and dangerous parts of the country.
"We had to enter into very significant negotiations without putting lives at risk and it took quite a few months to do that," he recalls. "At the end of the day we were able to negotiate quite a large number of trucks worth of medical supplies to get in to save the lives of children, pregnant women and newborns."
David says during this time he had become so conditioned to the chaotic way of life in Afghanistan during the five years he was based there, that the "real world" seemed abnormal. He recalls a creeping sense of insecurity when he was more than 10,000 metres in the sky on a commercial plane back home to his family in Australia. He no longer had his security system surrounding him. No bullet proof vests and helmets. No obligatory security clearance of passengers around him. And he felt vulnerable. He recalls that it was this moment after nearly ten years in Iraq and Afghanistan that it was time for him to move out.
"It can get to a situation that what is
normal is the way of life in Iraq and
Afghanistan and places like that, and what
becomes abnormal is the outside world."