Justin Heazlewood

I was very exhausted from living in Melbourne.

I couldn't really handle the city anymore.

Melbourne's not really the same place it was in 2008.

It just felt like a hectic, slightly overcrowded city.

And so Melbourne is just growing while I, as a person, seem to be becoming more sensitive.

I was just like...

can't really do this anymore.

So I just went back to Bernie.

Mum seemed to need all this help, you know, to write Get Up Mum.

I had to sort of have all this space from my mum and not really go home for two years, which was a pretty big deal.

And I'd never really done anything like that before.

So by the time I went back, mum had developed rheumatoid arthritis and was sort of looking all crippled and unwell and hobbling about.

And honestly, it turned my hair grey.

The events of 2019, seeing mum like that, I was like, holy shit, God.

Got to get mum some medical attention.

So go back home to deal with the third act of mum and I's relationship, which has essentially been a five-year journey of getting her the NDIS, getting her a lot of medical care and re-establishing networks in a town with a notoriously...

compromised health system so my mum's carer but I as I say to her in my lower moments or my more exhausted moments mum you know I'm not that well myself but I've got to do this job like because it's my mum loved me so much as a kid as a baby I had so much love around me that I want to I want to help my mum

It's this, you know, powerful force field that exists.

Like I don't do drugs.

I don't need to.