Melissa Lucashenko

You know, I trained for years.

I trained for 10 years and got my black belt after about three years.

What was your teacher like in karate?

Well, he became a bit of a father figure for a while, but he was an ex-copper.

who was a cop in the Joe era, but he'd had the intelligence to get out pretty fast.

But there was a lot of serving police at the academy where I trained.

And, you know, I've heard it from the horse's mouth about them laughing about beating people up and what it was like to be a copper in the 1982 Commonwealth Games protests, you know, on the police side of the barricades as opposed to the Aboriginal side of that protest.

Yeah, so interesting.

Very formative years.

Did you like competing?

Yeah, I loved competing.

It wasn't a club that was focused on competition.

That was a traditionalist kind of club and it was about doing your kata, getting your forms right, training hard and...

Putting your ego aside, learning to not focus on yourself but focus on the training.

And once a year we'd compete in the Queensland Karate Championships and yeah, yeah, I loved that.

Painted a lot of houses.

What's my trick?

I don't do it anymore.

That's the trick.

Make enough money to pay someone else to do it.