After around six months living with my father, I made the decision to return home. While I had been away, Mum and I had kept in contact through letters. She told me she hadn't been well, and as time went on I became increasingly concerned about her. Eventually, I decided I needed to go back.

Before returning, we made an agreement. I would be allowed to attend the local school, and I wouldn't be forced back into the religious lessons and restrictions I had grown up with. Unfortunately, the agreement lasted only a couple of weeks.

When things began returning to the way they had been before I left, I knew I couldn't stay. This time I didn't go back to Dad. I managed to get onto the Independent Youth Benefit and found a family closer to Matamata who were willing to let me board with them.

Mum and my siblings were still living on our farm, about 18 kilometres outside Matamata near the base of the Kaimai Range. It wasn't an enormous distance, but at fifteen, without reliable transport, getting between the two worlds wasn't always straightforward.

The family I boarded with lived on a farm too, but this was completely different from the isolated farm life I had known. They were really cool people who accepted me and treated me like part of their family. They had boys around my own age who attended the same school as me, and they were probably just as rebellious as I was. We got along well, and for the first time in my life, I had mates.

The school in Matamata was also a much better fit for me than the rough school Dad had enrolled me in while I was living with him, but that didn't mean it was easy. Academically, I was behind, and socially, I was awkward. After growing up so isolated from the outside world and receiving very little conventional education, I felt like a misfit walking into a normal school at fifteen. I didn't really know how I was supposed to act, so I did what a lot of teenagers do: I faked it and tried desperately to fit in.

My education was important to me. I wanted to learn, catch up on everything I'd missed and give myself some kind of future. For the first time, I was beginning to see that there might actually be a future worth preparing for.

Socially, school introduced me to something else that had been largely missing from my upbringing: girls. I could actually talk to them. Growing up, talking to girls had basically been forbidden. Girls were often referred to as "Jezebels", and Mum had warned me plenty of times that I needed to watch out for them. And watch out for them I certainly did.

Of course, I was also fifteen, and puberty was alive and well. My hormones were raging, my voice and body were changing, and unfortunately my skin was changing too. Acne had well and truly arrived. All of those normal teenage changes were happening at once, but because of the way I'd grown up, I didn't really have anyone explaining them to me. I was trying to figure out my changing body, hormones, attraction and relationships at the same time as I was trying to figure out how the rest of the world worked. Suddenly being surrounded by girls my own age certainly didn't make the hormones any quieter. It was another part of growing up that I was simply learning as I went.

At fifteen, living around Matamata with a group of equally rebellious mates, there was plenty of opportunity to run amok, and we certainly made the most of it. I looked older than I was, so buying alcohol wasn't particularly difficult. Weekends often involved underage drinking at Matamata's only "nightclub". We did some incredibly stupid things too, like riding three-up on a scooter into town while intoxicated.

When Matamata wasn't exciting enough for us, we'd pile into the Datsun and head for Hamilton to explore the city's nightlife. More often than not we'd be rejected at the door, which wasn't exactly surprising considering we were only fifteen, but every now and then we'd get lucky and make it inside. Sometimes only one of us would get in. They'd stay for a little while, then come back out and tell the rest of us about the wonders they'd seen inside, as though they'd just returned from another world.

Because we were drinking in the Datsun, we'd usually take the country back roads into Hamilton. Those roads became part of the adventure themselves, with hills, dips and corners and a group of fifteen-year-olds who thought they were bulletproof. That Datsun got airborne on more than one occasion.

Looking back now, it's frightening to think about just how dangerous some of the things we were doing actually were. We could have killed ourselves or someone else. At fifteen, though, consequences weren't something we gave much thought to. We were young, reckless and discovering a world that, for me especially, had been completely off limits.

There was something else I discovered during that time too: music. Real music. As kids, Mum had made all of us learn an instrument. Mine was the piano, and what I played were hymns. I hated it. My piano teacher kept a ruler close by, and if I played a wrong note, I'd get a rap across the knuckles with it. Needless to say, piano lessons weren't exactly something I looked forward to.

What I'd always wanted to learn was the guitar, but that wasn't an option. In the world I grew up in, the guitar represented rock music, and rock music was certainly not something we were supposed to be listening to, let alone playing.

Now, with this newfound freedom, an entirely new world opened up to me. I discovered Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Pantera, Led Zeppelin and so many others. After growing up so sheltered from popular culture, hearing this music for the first time was incredible, and I couldn't get enough of it.

There was something about the rawness of it, particularly the grunge music of the time, that grabbed me. Maybe it was because it sounded nothing like the world I'd come from. It was loud, rebellious and completely forbidden by everything I had been taught growing up, and I loved it. To this day, '90s grunge remains my jam.

Around this time, I'd also just got my driver's licence. I didn't exactly have the money to walk into a car yard, so I did what you did in the country and swapped an old chainsaw I had for a Hillman Hunter. It wasn't much, but it was mine.

Having the Hillman made getting back out to Mum's farm much more manageable and certainly much safer than what I'd been doing before. Until then, I'd sometimes ride my farm bike illegally along the back roads to get there.

Mum knew I rode the bike on the back roads, but motorcycles were another source of contention between us. She had made it very clear that once I got my car licence, I was forbidden from getting a motorcycle licence. By then, I was living away from home, receiving the Independent Youth Benefit, going to school and beginning to make my own decisions. Being told what I could and couldn't do still didn't sit particularly well with me, and the motorcycle licence became just one more thing we clashed over.

For the first time in my life, I had friends, music, girls, a car and a level of freedom I had never known. I was going to school, going out, drinking and laughing, and I was having the time of my life.

But there were really two lives happening at once. While my new life was opening up, Mum's world seemed to be getting smaller.

Her health continued to deteriorate. Despite the disagreements between us, when she needed help, I went home. I'd drive the Hillman back out to the farm and slip straight back into the responsibilities I'd grown up with. With Mum getting weaker, I took care of many of the physical jobs around the place. I'd stock the firewood, help wash the clothes, boil water over the fire for the bathtub, weed the garden and do whatever else needed doing for Mum and my siblings.

Mum's strength was disappearing. She was constantly short of breath, and her legs had begun to swell. The more she struggled, the more school I missed.

That was incredibly frustrating because I genuinely wanted an education. I was already trying to catch up academically, but every time I started making progress, I'd need more time away. I wasn't skipping school because I didn't care about it. I simply couldn't get ahead, let alone catch up, while also trying to help at home.

There was one strange advantage to being fifteen and having the level of independence I had: I could write my own notes excusing myself from class. There wasn't a parent managing my schooling or explaining my absences. I was effectively responsible for myself, so when I needed time away to go back to the farm, I'd write the note myself and hand it in.

Looking back, there was something almost ridiculous about a fifteen-year-old officially excusing his own absence from school, but that was my life. In some ways, I was discovering how to be a teenager for the very first time. In others, I was already carrying responsibilities that belonged to an adult.

Then I'd return to Matamata and become fifteen again, surrounded by friends, school, girls, music, alcohol and freedom. I was caught between two completely different worlds: one I couldn't wait to discover, and another I still felt responsible for.

I didn't know it then, but the freedom I'd only just discovered wasn't going to last.