Sarah Konoski

And I think she just had a suitcase at the end of her bed, just waiting and hoping that her family would come back.

Yeah, many times.

And in the 70s and 80s things, actually, there was a lot more insight into mental health and her medication started to help things.

And yeah, we would go over to WA from Melbourne and visit her.

And I just remember these big kind of open spaces with lots of beds and that suitcase still at the end of her bed as she was waiting for

for, you know, for Grandad, for her husband to come and pick her up still.

And yet she found peace and she walked through the gardens and spoke to fairies and just very connected to nature.

Yeah, and John, my uncle, visited her very regularly and they became very, very close, particularly in the later years.

Yeah, look, from the day he left her there, he never saw her again in his entire life.

And when she died, I guess he was probably...

70 years old or so, I'm told that he cried and cried and was not a particularly maybe emotionally open or vulnerable person.

This was quite a big, big deal.

And I'm sure there was regret and so many layers of unresolved feelings he had around it.

But he did say she was, you know, one of his big loves.

No, mum did.

Mum went against the grain and she just kept seeing her mum going to visit her.

She adored her and Jono and Jane likewise.

Yeah, she developed leukaemia and got incredibly ill.

This was in a time, I think, when people didn't survive from that, particularly children.

So, yeah, my grandfather got a job in Kalangadu in a sawmill.