Actor Nick Dyball, who plays David ‘Dlifer’ Miller, says the mullet and moustache are where the resemblance to his character’s eshay persona ends. Photo: Wattle St.
David ‘Dlifer’ Miller is your classic Australian ‘eshay’. He spends his time terrorising the streets of Canberra on his scooter, stealing cupcakes from children and damaging other people’s cars.
Until the young man’s sudden and comical death transforms him into a local legend.
As a registered organ donor, Dlifer helps save five lives and is affectionately named Australia’s Greatest Eshay.
Dlifer is not a real person. Instead, he’s part of an ad campaign dreamed up and filmed in Canberra by local ad agency Wattle St as part of DonateLife Week (the nickname, Dlifer, is even a play on ‘DonateLife’).
Mullet-sporting 18-year-old actor Nick Dyball brings the so-called eshay’s story to life in a tongue-in-cheek short film that has been viewed almost 8000 times since it was posted about a week ago.
“Eshays are quite common in Canberra,” Nick explains. “They’re young men usually, who are known to be menaces. They might be vaping or running around the city wearing athletic clothing.
“They sometimes speak in Pig Latin or throw up signs with their hands. So, I really just thought about the people I’ve seen in real life and their mannerisms and the way they act.”
But behind the humour of a stereotypical ‘eshay’ becoming a celebrated local hero is a serious message for young men like Nick, aged between 16 and 25 years old.
Funded by the Organ and Tissue Authority, the campaign’s logic says men in this age group take careless risks and if they do tragically die, are usually healthy.
Yet only 6 per cent are registered organ donors, in the context of even fewer people who die in hospitals (around 2 per cent) being found eligible.
“As soon as the campaign dropped, it was actually a reminder to me to sign up and take a minute to be an organ donor,” Nick admits.
“I’ve always wanted to, I just hadn’t really taken the time to actually do it weirdly, because it only took me under a minute.”
Nick says he thinks the reason behind low registration rates is that young people simply don’t spend time thinking about what might happen when they die.
However, the ACT as a whole has the third lowest organ donor registration rate in Australia at 27 per cent, well below the national average of 36 per cent.
Organ donation is ultimately the decision of the family, even if the deceased person is registered as an organ donor. While registering increases the chance of a family providing consent, people who register as donors are also encouraged to make their wishes known to their families. Nick says he’s managed to get a few of his friends on board and encouraged others to follow suit and ‘Donate a Minute, Donate a Lifetime’.
“The argument I hear often is, ‘My organs are no good’,” Nick laughs. “I’ve said, ‘Well, you’ve got plenty of them, so I’m sure something could be good’.”
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