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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Why do humans hold on to stuff, oddments we don't use, and yet can't quite throw out? It's not just you and me. Australia's oldest library is crammed with stuff that isn't books. Terrible paintings, old menus, human hair. Is this history or hoarding? I'm Annabelle Crabb. Come and have a rummage through the story of us told by our stuff.
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ABC Listen. Podcasts, radio, news, music and more. Moana Hope was a marquee player for the Collingwood Football Club in the AFLW's debut season back in 2017. Her backstory of growing up with 13 siblings in a two-bedroom house in Glenroy in Melbourne's Northwest and playing footy on a boys' team, along with her talent and cheeky personality, helped Mo stand out as a star of the women's game.
It wasn't until after her retirement from AFLW and becoming a mom of two that Mo began to rethink her childhood and make new realizations about her experiences. Some of those experiences will be hard to listen to, especially for children. as we talk about domestic violence and child abuse. So please take care while listening.
Today, Mo is a business owner, co-parents her kids, continues to play footy, and shares intimate snippets of her life with her more than 100,000 social followers. Hi, Mo. Your voice is so calming. Thank you. Let's start with 14 kids in a two-bedroom house. How does that work? Where did you all fit in?
How does that work? I mean, I'm not going to answer that. No, it was pretty crazy. So we grew up in... My mum still lives in the same housing commission house, but when we were growing up, it was only two bedrooms. And mum and dad had one room and all of us kids had the other room. And it was like, I remember just five sets of bunks and we all slept head to toe. It was so much fun though.
Like I loved it because... I was like a little terrible kid. We all were. We liked playing pranks. We had the bunks with the wood slats, so we would move them. So when people go to get into bed, they would fall through the bunk and then my mom would be like crazy mad. But it was fun.
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Chapter 2: What was Moana Hope's childhood like growing up with 13 siblings?
Like I loved it. We had our own little footy team.
And then some probably. Yeah. What sorts of mischief besides the wood slats did you get up to? How did you keep yourselves occupied?
I mean, we did some pretty crazy stuff. I remember as a kid, as a kid growing up in that house, to be fair, we were just like in a little bubble. There was not much I knew happened outside of that house. I didn't know things like other countries existed and things like that.
So when we were there, say we watched a movie, and I remember once we watched skydiving, me and my brothers, we went and got rubbish bags and jumped off the roof to see if we could skydive.
Yeah.
And then we did other things which were a little bit crazy but needed. Growing up, we didn't have much food. There were times where we didn't eat that often or there were times we missed meals. And I remember when you used to get the shopping delivery from like the supermarket, they used to deliver it to your house.
And our neighbour used to get their shopping delivered because we were hungry sometimes. Sometimes we would sneak like a box of cereal out of their shopping just so we could eat. So we were good kids but like also little rebels.
So you've described kind of the setup, but I mean, I imagine there have been so many chores, a lot of housework. How did your mom keep you all going?
Yeah, that's always the same. My mom could have been the CEO of Apple. So my dad actually passed away when I was 12 from cancer. He got leukemia and he died. We never knew he was dying, to be fair. I always just thought he was sick. And I remember I missed all of high school because I didn't have to. I wanted to move out and be his carer.
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Chapter 3: How did Moana Hope transition from community footy to the AFLW?
And so as a kid, I was like, what is that? Like, that's nice. That's a lovely thing. Nobody have asked me that before. So I knew I felt something from her in those moments that felt like something I'd never felt before. And as an adult, I can identify that as care. And so that was the only place I could go where I genuinely would feel safe. Like I was no good at school. I couldn't read or write.
I was just more worried about what happens when I got home. So just being there, being able to be free, being able to be with my mates and Being able to not live in fear was my favorite thing. Like it really was. Again, something else I've never told, but I also ended up in a foster home because of it whilst I was in primary school. They took me out from all the bruises.
They seen all the bruises. I think they ended up telling the principal and I went to a foster home for a little while. But it was the only place I could go. That was generally, I didn't have to live in fear anymore.
So tell me about high school, because you were involved in the Koori Open Door Education Program. What was that like? What were the kids like?
Yeah, I went to an Aboriginal school and I loved it, like loved it. I didn't go to do much school because I moved out to be my dad's carer. But when I went, I just felt like we were just two, like we were two of the same. And I learned a lot about Aboriginal culture. And for me, that was normalized. So everything that I had learned is what I guess Australia is kind of learning right now.
And the piece some of the people I went to school with are still my mates to this day. And just played footy. I just went there for footy. I didn't really like the school side of it because I wasn't great at it, but I just loved the footy, playing footy at lunchtime and just seeing friends.
And you mentioned you ended up being your dad's carer. Now that we know about how violent your father was, I'm just curious about that situation. Because he would have been ill, I suppose, less physically strong. Mm-hmm. Why did you decide to do that and what was that – how did that go for you, knowing what we know about what he was like to all of his kids?
Yeah, it was – you know what? If you asked me about this before I processed this, I'd say, oh, I just loved him. I'd do anything for him because that's the person I am. I'm a caregiver. I love. Ask me that now, I'll tell you. It was – making him sick didn't make him – It didn't make him beat you less. It just meant he wasn't as strong. But he had this thing.
We call it the honka honka, but it's like a horn, right? And it's like what you have on a bike. Anyway, I'm trying to do it with my hands.
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Chapter 4: What challenges did Moana face after retiring from AFLW?
Where am I? And she gave me my wardrobe, like a wardrobe that was built-in wardrobe. I was like, it's my wardrobe. I've never had a wardrobe. She brought me clothes and then she paid for me to go get my tickets to work as a traffic controller and help me get a job. And I remember she would buy me pizza every Friday, and it was the first time I had pizza. And I just loved it.
I was just like, this is the most incredible thing. Like, you know, you are helping me. And I'd not received help before, so I just silently took it, which was nice.
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So, Mo, you were telling me about Nikki Graves, who took you in and paid for you to get training in traffic management after you left school. What did that job entail?
Yeah, so I was a traffic controller, you know, with the stop-slow bats on the roads. I did that and I loved it because it was like I had an income. I'm seeing things that made things in my life possible, like money in my bank. I mean, I could pay for things. I could afford rent. I could buy clothes. I could buy food. Well, not even clothes. It was mostly food. And I could have a car.
My dream car was a Holden. Don't judge me. I was just like, I've got to have a Holden Commodore. I'm a broadie girl. And so I was like, I could do these things. This is possible. What color? I didn't care. Okay. I just loved the Commodore. But I ended up buying a green one. Yeah. I pictured green. Did you? In my head. Yeah, that's cool. It was my first car. I loved it.
And so these things that she helped me do just allowed me to see possibilities. But then the thing with traffic management, I did it for two years. And then the company I worked for, their engineer quit. And the manager, because I was dropping a ute off, he was like, hey, can you come in and can you help us just for a little bit? He was like, can you turn the computer on and open Excel?
I couldn't spell Excel. I'd never used a computer in my life and I didn't know what he was talking about. But I was like... wait, this could be a full-time job. I need to do this. So I turned the computer on and I Googled Excel and it fixed my spelling and it showed me Excel and I opened it and they just got me to do admin. And I was like, they'll like come back tomorrow.
And I was like, well, that's great because I come back. So what I ended up doing was I downloaded like the Australian Standards and Codes of Practice and I took it home and I taught myself everything over about a month. And I would Google words I couldn't read and I would make it accessible for me. So I'd put it in a different sentence, taught myself.
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