Bruna Papandrea

She was working on an assembly line like most migrant workers and that's where, you know, they learned all about sex and they learned all about the different cultures because they were all working on that line together.

And she told me about this Aussie woman and every day the Aussie woman's husband would drop her at the factory and he would say, I love you, and she would say, I love you back, and my mother would, of course, who loves sound effects like schluck schluck and things like that,

She said he would give her a kiss, matz, mutz.

That was them both kissing each other.

And this Aussie woman would talk about how much she loved her husband and every morning there he was again, I love you, darling, I love you too, matz, mutz, matz, mutz.

Then one day this Australian woman came to work and she was really, really upset and all the ethnic women like, well, what happened?

And she said she got home from work and there was a note from her husband and he said, I don't love you anymore.

I love somebody else.

I'm leaving you.

No.

And so that's when I think my mother got a real healthy cynicism around how the word is often how you feel in that moment.

It might not be permanent.

And she said, your father and I never said I love you, I love you all the time, but God, I knew he loved me.

Yeah, I mean, when you're 14, those feelings, because they're the ones that have come first and you never forget your big first crushes.

They're just all-encompassing because we're so hormonal, so fresh to the mix, as they would say on bad radio shows, you know, and you're just fresh legs on the field.

And everything.

I remember boys used to walk past me, boys that I had crushes on at high school, they would walk past me in the corridor and I'd lose my breath and I miss those feelings.

Big feelings.

Okay, so there has never been an artist that has impacted more on my life and the way I look at the world than Stevie Wonder.

When I, like Bruna, grew up pretty poor in Collingwood, we moved to the white middle class and I was ostracised because I was not white and I was not middle class.