Dr. Dean Lomax

They were, yeah.

My mum and my dad were really supportive.

I have an older brother and sister, Scott and Julie.

At a point during my, I guess, early teen years, my parents split up.

And so I lived in a one-parent household for a number of years where...

We'd struggle to pay the rent, but mum always did her best to provide for us.

And she made sure that we had a wonderful, wonderful childhood.

No, we didn't.

No, we didn't.

And although I always tried my best in school, I was very, very average.

A lot of lessons could end up being disruptive.

And sometimes some of the teachers wouldn't be so supportive as well.

I mean, one or two of them had even said, you'll never be a paleontologist.

Yeah, and that was a real problem.

So at that point, in some respect, my kind of dream of becoming a paleontologist started to fall away from me.

But it was kind of the last few weeks in school.

And I was put into one of the classes where it was kind of not the naughty children, but basically the children who the school didn't know what to do with.

And I had this supply teacher come in.

I've kept in touch, actually.

His name was Mr. Bonacorsi, Renato Bonacorsi.