Dan Rankin (aka Trials)

So some of your earliest memories are from Wales in the UK.

What kind of pictures do you have in your head of Wales?

Is it that kind of rolling green lush hills or is it more like post-industrial Wales?

It was green hills, but the actual centre part where I lived, which is called Gwent, Tredegar, very much stone, very much small houses squashed in like sardines.

Lots of two-storey houses, but very thin houses.

So council estates everywhere, but just on the other side of that fence, giant green hills covered in Wales' finest cow manure.

Did it feel like home to you when you were little?

I don't know if I've really ever felt that.

To compare it to, I'm not sure.

How were your Welsh grandparents with you when you were little?

They were amazing.

I can't fault how much effort they put in with me to make me feel like I wasn't othered as much as the other kids or family members may have made me feel at that time.

I'm pretty sure that it would have been difficult for them, knowing that they were from a certain generation from a certain time and...

I was not like anybody else in that town.

So there would have been a certain explanation that probably had to come with introducing me.

And I'm hyper aware that they would have made a lot of allowances for me to be comfortable.

So I appreciate everything they did and tried to do for me, for sure.

No, not too many Indigenous Australian kids in that part of Wales.

Not a whole lot.

There's not many people that make it over there.