John Makita

And

the best way of coping with that was just to keep it somewhere within close reach.

Also, look, I've got to admit too, back in those days, it was a cash economy.

So they had a family business making kitchens and cabinets and a lot of people would pay cash.

And so they had quite a bit of cash around, which they still had a good amount of money in the bank, but they just wanted to have it readily accessible.

And that's the reason why that they had such a large amount of money in their home in Redhill.

And I think that continued to follow them, obviously, when they moved to Mackellar, that they still felt safer if they had some disposable income at ready hands reach, yeah.

No, I was one of the ones that didn't.

It was only a few of the family members, my mum, my dad, my brother who built the kitchen.

And like we had heard during the court case, there may have been one or two other people, but I was never aware.

My grandmother, I remember going to the house in Red Hill and it was, she would place things in unusual locations.

So if you went to the cupboard to get a tea towel, suddenly there would be

you know, either some money or there would be a gold ring wrapped up in something.

I mean, this is just the way it was.

She would just hide things all across the house, which inevitably ended up as the reason why these offenders had gone through the whole house, especially in McKellar, because that's the way that my grandma did it.

She would not keep everything in one location, but obviously having that safety hidey hole in McKellar, it allowed her to put everything in the one spot.

I think it was basically during the police investigation.

I had never seen it.

The first time that I had seen any photos inside the house, or even photos of my grandfather when he was first beaten, when they had brought him to the hospital, was on the 60 Minutes special, and that was quite confronting.

But prior to that, we'd never seen anything.