Sarah Kanowski

And then my auntie left my uncle and things went a bit downhill from that point again because there was no secure income.

So we were poor again.

I learned some lessons about how to manage money based on settling cycles and those sorts of things.

And we had to take on different responsibilities as kids because my auntie, I guess, stepped back into her youth, went back into dating and she met a guy who lived a little bit further away.

We were living on the north side of Brisbane and he lived towards Ipswich.

So she spent a bit of time with him and my sister kind of stepped in, my older sister stepped in as like a carer kind of thing with paying for school lunches and taking us to the movies every now and again.

And my brother also worked, so most of his income went towards food, like dinners or whatever else, if my auntie was away.

So there was still some... I mean, she did the best she could and she was a great person for me to look to for, like...

direction and what I needed to focus on.

But sometimes there was that insecurity again.

That's a good question.

I don't know.

I know that we didn't go to school a lot when I was in grade one, when my mum had me.

I remember taking homework sheets home when I was six and then just hiding in my bedroom and doing the homework sheets and then taking them back to school and then giving them to my teacher and just getting that, you know, that praise that I was craving as a little kid, just someone to say, you know, well done, Dave, good boy, whatever it is.

Yeah, I know we didn't go to school a lot.

So I don't know that there was a lot of understanding.

Maybe there was.

Maybe someone knew.

Maybe they were having conversations with people that we didn't know about.

Yeah, definitely.