My childhood wasn't always unusual.

In the beginning, life was reasonably normal.

Then my mother found religion.

And slowly, almost everything changed.

Mum became involved with the SDA Reform movement, and religion began shaping virtually every part of our lives.

Church was on Saturdays, not Sundays.

But eventually, we didn't even go to church.

Mum became concerned that church itself could expose us to bad influences, so our world became smaller and more isolated.

Birthdays disappeared.

Christmas disappeared.

Things other kids probably took for granted simply weren't part of our lives anymore.

We lived on farms in the middle of nowhere and became what people today would probably call doomsday preppers.

We were poor. Really poor.

Money was something we simply didn't have.

We lived in run-down rental farmhouses and made do with whatever we had around us.

For years, we lived without electricity.That meant no television, No radio, No refrigeration.

We cooked our meals over an open fireplace in the lounge room.

Mum made our bread herself.

And when I say bread, I'm being generous.

Some of those loaves were so bloody tough she literally used a saw to cut them.

Our milk wasn't dairy milk.Mum made it from soya beans.

Vegetables came from a garden beside the house, where we grew much of what we ate.

Fruit was often bought dehydrated because without a refrigerator, keeping fresh food wasn't always practical.

We didn't eat meat or dairy.Everything was basic.

Firewood wasn't something we cut just to have a cosy fireplace on a cold night. We needed it to cook.

This was simply everyday life.

Looking back, there's almost something funny about that bread. But as a kid, I didn't really know any different.

This was home.

But one of the things I wanted more than almost anything else was an education.

I was supposedly homeschooled, although very little actual education was given.

And that wasn't what I wanted.

I often asked Mum if I could go back to school.

I wanted an education., Iwanted to learn.

But every time I asked, the answer was no.

In the world we were being raised to believe in, education didn't really have much purpose.

Why spend years preparing for a career or building a future when we believed the end times were coming?

If being persecuted for our beliefs and eventually running to the hills was going to be our future, what was the point of school?

At least, that was the thinking.

But as a kid, I wanted something different.

I wanted to go to school like other children.

I wanted an education.

I wanted friends.

I had none.

There weren't other kids coming over after school.

There were no birthday parties, sleepovers or afternoons hanging around with mates.

Instead, my days were filled with work, religion and whatever freedom I could find for myself on the farm.

I had a part-time job with a neighbouring farmer, helping milk around 300 cows morning and evening.

Back home, there was firewood to cut because we needed it for cooking our meals.

Then there was Bible study..Hours of it.

It wasn't optional.

Several hours could be spent studying the Bible because preparing ourselves spiritually for what was supposedly coming was considered far more important than preparing me for an education or career.

And what was supposedly coming terrified me.

I was raised believing we were living in the last days.

The end of the world wasn't some distant religious idea.

It was real, It was coming.

I believed Christians would eventually be persecuted for their beliefs and that we could be forced to flee into the hills.

When you're a child and your mother tells you something is true, you believe her.

And when you're isolated from most of the outside world, there aren't many other voices around telling you anything different.

It affected the way I thought about the future before I'd really even had the chance to understand what a future was.

But there was one place where I could get away from all of it.

My farm bike.

When I wasn't working, cutting firewood or studying the Bible, I'd get on that bike and run absolutely amuck around the property.

Looking back, those hours probably gave me something I didn't have much of anywhere else.

Freedom.

For a while, there was nobody telling me what the end of the world was going to look like.

Nobody telling me what I was supposed to believe.

Nobody telling me there was no point planning for a future.

Just me, a farm bike and as much of the property as I could tear around.

I was still a kid.

And despite everything, there were times I got to behave like one.That's important to me when I look back.

Because I don't want to rewrite my childhood and pretend every moment was miserable.

It wasn't.

And despite everything I've written about those years, there's something incredibly important to understand about my mum.

She was my everything.

I didn't agree with the way she chose for us to live, especially as I got older and started wanting to experience more of the outside world.

But she was all I had. Mum sacrificed enormously for her children.

Looking back as an adult, I can disagree with many of the choices she made while still understanding why she made them.

She genuinely believed what she was doing was right.

When birthdays and Christmas disappeared, when our lives became increasingly isolated, and when I was denied the education I desperately wanted, I don't believe Mum thought she was hurting us.

In her mind, she was protecting us.

She believed the world was approaching its final days and that the sacrifices she was making were helping protect her children's eternal salvation.

That's an important distinction.

Because this isn't a story about a mother who didn't love her children.

Quite the opposite.

My mum loved us enough that she was prepared to give up almost everything because she genuinely believed it would save us.

I just wish the beliefs she put so much faith in hadn't cost us so much along the way.

Because eventually those beliefs became connected to something far more serious than birthdays, Christmas or school.

My mother strongly believed in natural therapies.

Those beliefs were heavily reinforced by the religious environment surrounding us.

Then Mum got cancer.

She didn't seek conventional medical treatment straight away.

At the time, I couldn't possibly understand what all of that would eventually mean.

I was still a kid trying to understand a world I'd barely been allowed to experience.

By fifteen, I wanted out.

So I ran away.

Somewhere outside that farm was another parent.

My father.

I hadn't seen him since I was six years old.

Nine years.

More than half my life.

I went looking for him.

Eventually, I found him.

Iturned up at his door.

He looked at me.

And he didn't recognise me.

His own son was standing in front of him.

And he had no idea who I was.

I'd spent years wanting to see what existed outside the world I'd grown up in.

I was about to find out.

And I was completely unprepared for what came next.

Within another year, at just sixteen years old, I would also lose my mother to cancer.

The person who had been my entire world was gone.

And despite all the things I'd disagreed with, all the things I'd wanted to escape from, I would have given anything to have her back.

The world I'd known was disappearing.

Another one was opening in front of me.

Alcohol.Marijuana.Eventually meth.

But I didn't know any of that yet.

At that moment, I was just a fifteen-year-old kid standing at his father's door.

Waiting to be recognised.