Melissa Lucashenko

Oh, God.

My father was a bush carpenter.

He could fix anything mechanical and he could build sheds like there was no tomorrow.

I think when he died, we counted something like 17 sheds on the three acres that...

the Russians had carved off for him because he was clearly not going to be a success in life.

I heard my grandmother put it, she said, he does not want for originality of character.

Which is quite the phrase to talk about your son.

She was right.

He was mad as a cut snake and also an extremely violent man himself, I should add.

But he wasn't violent to me and he built sheds.

He...

He was good with the land too.

You know, they both came from farming backgrounds, my parents, and mum could grow anything.

She could make a star picket flower.

And we grew most of what we ate when I was growing up.

You know, we had pumpkins, we had beans, we had tomatoes, we had rosellas, we had pawpaw, we had everything.

I think the only things that we bought were probably bread and meat and milk and everything else was the sweat of your brow.

I couldn't remember a time when I wasn't in love with horses.

Oh, look, I used to jump on any unbroken horse that was in the vicinity.

Well, there was a paddock down the back of where I grew up and at one stage someone had some horses on adjustment in there and I remember there being this young...