Moana Hope on a life spent caring for others and re-learning how to love
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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. Search for the History or Hoarding podcast on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.
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.
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. So his doctor said because he was so unwell, it was too stressful to be in the house. So him and I moved out. I became his carer, missed all of high school. And I remember after he died, my mom was just the most incredible woman because at that point she also fostered a whole heap of kids.
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