In this series, I meet extraordinary Australians...
This is what I do. This is who I am.
It's so exciting to be here.
(LAUGHS) (LAUGHS)
..who tell me their fascinating stories...
It was like someone had just given me gold.
..while I paint their portrait.
Like, I would sleep with my bat as a kid.
(LAUGHS)
My challenge is to capture their character...
That's not what you've got the power of the microphone to do.
..and put it on the canvas.
I was born this colour for a reason.
The portrait is theirs to keep, so I want them to like it.
Oh, my God! Heavens above.
Oh, my God! Wow!
Gee! That's incredible!
Wow! Oh, my God.
She's hot! (LAUGHS)
Welcome to Anh's Brush With Fame.
Leah Purcell
is a multi-talented performer and storyteller.
After a difficult childhood in rural Queensland,
she ended up on a Brisbane stage...
♪ Run, Daisy, run... ♪
..making her name in music and theatre...
Ah, you must be a gin jockey, hey?
..before appearing on our screens.
She's an award-winning actress...
You really think I'm gonna let you leave me here
with four kids on my own
when two of them are your spoilt brats?
..with extensive experience behind the scenes,
and also an acclaimed writer.
I want to find out how her passion for stories evolved.
I'm very much looking forward to having my portrait painted.
It's scary, I think, a little bit, to see what the artist captures,
but I think Anh's great.
I'd really like Anh to capture my curly hair.
I love my curls.
And just the happiness, in my eyes, you know, life is good.
So I hope that we capture that.
Leah Purcell is a creative dynamo.
She can be formidable onscreen,
giving a sense of strength combined with a nurturing quality,
as well as a great sense of fun.
I need to capture her fighting spirit without losing that gentler side.
Leah. Hey, Anh, mate.
Welcome! Thank you.
So happy you could make it today. Pleasure.
(LAUGHS) Take a seat.
Thank you.
Wow. They're great shoes!
They are!
I got them at the Cannes Film Festival in France.
And I thought they were Aboriginal design,
and I went,
"They're a deadly pair of shoes that I think I need to get."
Yeah. Let's dive right into the deep end.
Yeah.
Your mother was Aboriginal, and your father white?
Yeah, um... the old man, he was from English and German stock.
Um...
He was married to a... to a non-Aboriginal lady, a white lady,
and they had three kids,
but he had six kids
to my Aboriginal mum,
and I was the youngest of the six.
He was a boxing trainer.
He was a jack of all trades, really.
He wasn't around when I grew up.
He was more around for the older ones.
But it was... it was a secret in the town.
I'm sure everyone knew.
But I was told not to mention his name,
and... and when he did come to see us, it was all hush-hush, but...
So he had... he had a white family... Yeah.
..and then you were a secret family?
Yeah, on the other side of the railway tracks,
in a little town called Murgon.
Wow. Yeah.
And I remember my dad would work in the butcher shops.
So when we'd go up to the pub on a Friday night,
I'd skip across to the butcher shop
and I'd wait till all the... everyone left the butcher shop.
So you couldn't come in and say "Hey, Dad, can I have a chicken leg?"
Oh, no, no.
It was, like, stand up the back, and I'd be standing up the back waiting,
and they'd all go out.
It'd be about 5 o'clock,
and he'd give me a wink and I'd wink back, and give me a chicken leg.
That was dinner. You know, and off...
Gave you a chicken leg!
And then me and Mum would go off to the pub, you know, and...
But my mother always said, "That's your dad and you respect him.
"You don't ever say a bad word about him," you know?
Although her family's identity was cloaked in secrecy,
even at the age of five,
Leah's sense of self was strong.
And no more so than in the boxing ring with her dad.
That's how we sort of could connect with him.
We'd go to the... the, up to the showgrounds,
this big old bloody barn hall,
and we'd box.
And I'd get in the ring.
And he said to me when I was a little kiddie -
I was about five -
he said, "You've got the best technique out of all these boys."
He said, "If only you were a boy you'd be Australian champ."
And then when I was seven, the old man put me in the ring
and he said, "You want to box, Leah?"
And I said, "Yeah I do, Dad."
So away we went, and then I seen him give my nephew the nod - whack.
Planted me, straight on the canvas I went.
Got up, and he said, "You want to box anymore?"
And I went, (TEARFULLY) "No..." (LAUGHS)
So I got off and I became the spit girl.
What's the spit girl do?
Well, you... you hold the bucket so they spit in it.
Yeah, right.
So you know, so they're getting directions,
they're in the, the heat of the moment of boxing,
and I was this little girl,
and I'd be standing there and I'm... and they'd just go... (SPITS)
They don't aim or anything. And, mate, I caught 'em all!
(LAUGHS)
What an interesting relationship.
Yeah, it was weird,
and it was very much a love/hate relationship
because... I knew he was my dad,
um... but he wasn't doing fatherly things.
The job of raising Leah and her older siblings
fell solely on her mum, Florence.
Can you tell me more about your mum, Florence?
My mum is my hero.
She was my mother, she was my father,
she was a determined woman,
yet she was also from that era of oppression,
where she was only... an education to Grade 4.
She was 14, she went off to be a maid.
She also did droving with my grandfather.
There was always black fellas and white fellas at our house,
and when Mrs P said anything, or Aunty Flo, everyone jumped.
My mum was doing reconciliation before the word became trendy.
(CHUCKLES)
There'd always be a party at our house.
And her trick at the parties
were dancing with bottle tops on her toes.
Yeah. (LAUGHS)
And she'd sing, and she'd...
So how would she... how would she do that?
Well, she... she'd get the stubby... Sure.
..and put it on, and she'd step onto it,
and then all... she'd tap it out, mate!
She's tapping with the bottle tops? Yeah!
Yeah, with bottle tops under her feet.
(LAUGHS)
With money and space in the family home being tight,
escapism came in the form of alcohol.
I understood why she drank.
She had her mother at home that she looked after for 27 years.
She raised seven children. Cousins. She raised seven children. Cousins.
You know?
And she had a relationship with a man that she couldn't really love.
Mmm. You know?
In the small town of Murgon,
Leah faced racism from both Indigenous and white communities.
We got racism from both sides,
because we weren't black enough to be black,
we weren't white enough to be white.
We were yellow, you know?
But displacement was nothing new for Leah's family.
My grandmother was considered subhuman.
She was stolen generations, and she was moved to Cherbourg in 1910.
Cherbourg was founded in 1904 as a government experiment
by putting a group of taken blackfellas off traditional lands,
and let's see if they can live.
Can you take me right back about your grandma's experience of being taken?
Yeah.
When I was a little girl of about five... you know, through to seven,
when the storms would come in Murgon,
we'd all turn everything off and go sit in her room.
And then she would talk about the big horses that came.
And she said when the horses come,
they could feel the vibration in the ground,
and the women would say, "Run."
So all these "fair-skinned", the ones that had white dads,
would take off...
And hide? ..climb trees and hide, yeah.
But they rounded 'em up.
How did you find primary school?
I hated it, you know?
I was making adult's decisions by the age of 10.
I'd cook for my nan when my mum was up the pub.
I'd be sent home, and I had to get back before the lights came on.
So sitting in a classroom and being treated like a child
didn't sort of sit with me.
And I would be tired, God bless my mum, you know,
because I'd be putting her to bed at 4:00.
Gosh.
So I was just always worried about my mum.
I'd see her cut up to town,
'cause you could see through the railway tracks,
and I'd see her little shape
and I'd... I'd just jump the fence and take off.
'Cause I knew she was going to the pub, you know.
And I'd just meet her on the corner.
She goes, "What are you doing?" I went...
And I remember, you know,
I'd get up and say, "Mum, come on, you've got to go to bed.
"I've got to get up for school soon."
And... and one day she pulled me into her lap -
she was playing Jim Reeves.
She'd always cry at Jim Reeves and Elvis Presley.
(LAUGHS)
And she put me in her lap and she said to me... she said,
"Without you, I'd be in the gutter."
And that's when I... I was about 10,
and that's when I knew my job was to be there for my mum.
So I wasn't a very good student at school.
But the one thing that I knew that I kind of was good at,
if I had to recite a poem, write a story,
that stuff that I was passionate about.
Tell me about the time you wrote a story,
and it was one big long sentence - there was no full stop anywhere?
Oh, well, yeah.
That was when I was in Grade 7. There was a writing competition.
Yeah.
And the teacher said, "We're all... I want you to all write a story,"
and it was about writing about your neighbours.
So I wrote about them, and the teacher pulls me up.
We got the story back and there's red everywhere.
Capital letters, you know, for punctuation and full stops.
Grammar. Commas, grammar.
And this "See me," and I went, "Oh, I'm in trouble."
So after school I've staggered... you know, stumble up to the desk.
And I threw the book and I said, "I'm sorry, miss."
And she goes, "What are you sorry for?" I said, "Look at all the red!"
And she goes, "No, no, no. Don't worry about that."
She goes, "But I want to tell you, this is a great story."
Mmm. And I went, "What? Really?
"With all that red?"
She goes, "Don't worry about that. We can fix that." I said, "Can ya?"
And it was the first time in my school years, first seven,
that I walked out of school feeling special.
Wow.
And the next morning I was there at 8.30. First time ever.
And we worked on it and I put drafts in, and I won.
So that was the Murgon's Rotary Lions Club,
and I won a certificate,
and I got a silver pen.
By the time she reached high school,
Leah had discovered the magical, musical world of amateur theatre,
and was hooked.
So when I was doing the high school musicals,
I'd get all these strangers coming up to me saying,
"You were great. You deserve to be in Hollywood."
Yeah.
You know, and my family wasn't saying this,
so you just tuck it away.
'Cause my mum said to me when I was about nine... she goes,
"What do you want to be when you grow up?"
And of course every little girl wanted to dance,
but I grew up watching Liza Minnelli, Barbra Streisand,
and Doris Day,
and Doris Day was my hero. Yeah.
And I said, "Oh, I'm gonna be an actor like Doris Day,
"sing and dance."
And my mum said,
"Look, you're a girl, you're black, and you're from the bush.
"I think you've got to think realistically.
So you can either work at the meatworks, or be a nurse.
Faced with the dim prospect of never leaving her home town,
15 year old Leah succumbed to a holiday job at the meatworks.
But it opened a door she never imagined possible.
Tell me about how the foreman said... I don't...
Yeah, yeah!
On my first day, he said,
"Before you go down to the floor,"
he goes, "I want to see you in my office."
And I went, "Haven't even started and I've done something wrong!"
Yeah! "What is it with me?"
So I walk into his office and I was panicking,
'cause I thought, "Oh, gosh, I'm in trouble."
And he goes, "I just want to let you know
"that I saw you in the high school musical."
And I went, "Uh, yeah?"
And he said, "You were great."
And I went, "OK..."
He goes, "So don't come looking for a job here when you finish school,
"'cause I'm not gonna give you one."
And I went, "Great! So now I'm unemployed!"
You know, it's like, "Thanks!"
And he... I said, "But can I work now?
(LAUGHS) (LAUGHS)
And he said, "Yeah, as long as you go back to school.
"You need to go and study."
And he was the one that said I needed to go to college,
to do that... to get, you know,
and I went, "Oh, is that what you do?"
'Cause I had no idea.
At 17, you fall pregnant.
Yeah. Well, I... it was deliberate. It was planned.
I was a late bloomer. All my other mates had kids, you know?
And I was the last one of them.
At 17? Yeah.
Wow. I was the last one.
Well, I knew that I was a little mate for my mum,
and I said, "I want my little mate."
So it was planned. My daughter was planned at 17.
Finished high school.
I did finish Grade 12 with, you know, a couple of...
..one A, and Bs and Cs.
And I turned 18 in August.
My daughter was born in September.
My mother died in October.
Oh, gosh.
Yeah, when I was about four months pregnant,
we found out she had bowel cancer... Yep.
..and the doctor only gave her four months to live,
but she hung around,
I think to see how I went with the pregnancy.
Yep.
And she saw me for about a month and we'd take the baby in
and she... told me a few tricks, you know, with breastfeeding,
and she says, "You're gonna do alright."
She goes, "That's your kid - you look after it."
And she said, "I think it might be a good weekend to die,"
and we said, "Yeah. Why not?"
You know, "Off you go."
Shortly after your mum passed, you, uh... you contemplated suicide.
Yeah.
After Mum left,
everything just sort of... I don't know, came crashing down.
I turned to the bottle,
and I had my little girl there,
and I... and she was a baby, and I... and I knew that wasn't right.
The relationship had deteriorated massively with her dad.
And sort of, I lost who I was,
I got isolated, you know,
and then I... I went, "Oh, I'm gonna go shopping."
I went into town, did some shopping,
and it was coming home,
and there was this great stretch of road,
and there was a gum tree there.
And I said, "If I just kept going straight
"instead of taking this corner,
"wouldn't it be easier?" Mmm.
And I picked up speed, to... kept going straight,
and then my daughter started laughing.
And I just caught her in the rear view mirror,
and I... and I... you know, I took the corner.
And I said because...
If I died and she lived, who would understand her?
So she saved me that day.
And then I pulled my socks up.
How did you pull your socks up? Tell me.
Well I stopped drinking, for a start.
I got back into my training, my boxing.
So I could become whole. You know?
You were kind of healing yourself. Yeah, yeah.
And then I had to get away,
'cause the pressure of the ex-partner was still on me.
And then I went away, saw another side to life outside of Murgon.
So then I ring my sister and go,
"I'm not coming home. I'm moving to Brisbane."
Leah is a natural storyteller.
She's been shaped by the women who raised her
to be a strong and independent thinker
who can stand up for herself.
I get a real sense of the fire inside.
She's passionate and resilient.
I need to capture her wonderful creative spirit.
By the mid 90s,
the fire had that been lit in Leah's belly for performing,
took her first to Brisbane, then Sydney,
with baby Amanda in tow.
Tell me about that first time you went to a Sydney cafe.
Oh... classic.
When I... when I jumped on the bus, I said I'd like to go to town.
And he went, "What?"
He said, "Oh, Town Hall?"
And I went, "OK, Murgon Town Hall is in the middle of town..."
"Yeah, Town Hall." "That'll do."
"Great. that'll do. That'll do."
So up I go.
And... and I get out and I went,
"Oh, yeah, that's a pretty bloody big Town Hall!
"Bit bigger than Murgons!"
And I went, "Oh, shit. Where do I go for a coffee?"
So I walked across the road,
and I went, "Oh, this one will do." So I walk in.
And I went, "Oh, can I have a cup of coffee?"
And they went, "Yeah, what... what... what?"
And I went, "What?"
He's, "Well, what type of coffee?"
And I went, "Oh."
You know, "Oh, it isn't instant," you know?
And he went like this, and presented the board,
and, mate, I couldn't read the board!
(LAUGHS) Girlfriend's flat out...
Macchiato, cappuccino, latte...
Girlfriend found out, English and then this...
And I went, "Holy moly. I don't even know how to read that!"
So then, "Oh, look, I've changed my mind, mate.
"Can I have a cup of tea?"
(LAUGHS) And he went, "Yeah. What type?"
And I went, "You're kidding me."
And he goes this side, and there's all the teas.
Lemongrass... Lemongrass.
Earl grey! And I said, "Who's he?" You know?
And what's... you know, what's he got to do with tea?
And then I went, Can I just have a glass of water?
And he went, "Still or sparkling?"
And I went, "Bugger this! I'm going home!"
So I jumped on my bus, and I never went back to town.
(LAUGHS)
The big smoke might have scared Leah at first,
but it introduced her to influential writers and directors,
and she co-wrote her life experiences
into a one-woman play, called Box the Pony.
I orally... and what's beautiful is it's proper blackfella way.
I orally gave my story,
gave the story of my daughter's birth,
I gave the story of my mother,
I gave the story of my grandmother.
This is a cultural practice.
This is my dreaming and it's continuous,
and it... and, you know, it's got four generations of women.
(SLURS) Come on! You better dance with your mother.
(HIGHER-PITCHED) Mum! I want to go home.
Come on! I'm getting tired!
You played a whole range of characters...
Yeah. ..by yourself.
Yeah. There was 15 all up, I think.
You played your mum and your nan... I played my mum.
So it tracked my dreaming, you know,
from being a little girl and the boxing,
and the boxing played a big part.
What you lookin' at?
And that was paying homage to my old man.
He and my brothers! They're gonna punch the...
You've got to be careful of yourself.
Talk to me about the opening night.
Opening night, there was no previews of the play.
It was opening night at the drama theatre,
at the Sydney Opera House.
Wow.
How's that for a first opening night, eh?
Sydney Opera House! 450 people.
Wow.
And my first time on a... on a big stage.
Yep.
Doing a one-woman show playing 15 characters.
I was literally going insane. (LAUGHS)
I was so afraid. Yes.
And I said to my stage manager,
I said, "I'll see you in 10 seconds or an hour and 10."
She goes, "Let's make it an hour and 10,"
and just pushes me out into the dark.
And away I went.
Wow.
And then Box The Pony went to Edinburgh and London and...
That's why I knew I was doing the right thing.
If I wasn't doing the right thing
by the people that I spoke about in that play,
I would not have the success that I had with it.
Talk to me about reconnecting with your dad in that period.
I went back and I said,
"I think you owe me a few answers on, you know, what you did.
"You know, two ladies that bore children to you,
"and I want to know who I am."
He said, "Oh, where shall we start?
And I said, "Oh, well, with your mother and father,"
and he said, "We'll go out to the cemetery."
And he's walking around
and this other elderly lady come there and recognised...
..and he'd just moved back to Murgon.
And she was calling out to him.
"Oh, what, are you looking for your parents?
"They're down this way!"
And, "Yeah, yeah, and who's this lovely lady?"
And I looked at him, and he looked at me,
and then we looked at her, and he looked at me.
He said, "That's my daughter," and he took off and went that way.
And I... And she went... I said, "But you don't know me."
And I took off and went that way. It was hilarious!
I was pissing myself laughing.
But I also had a tear too, like,
that was the first time in 32 years
he publicly acknowledged that I was... I was his daughter.
You don't realise how much you kind of need validation,
and it was kind of nice, you know, to have that,
and it was alleviating my anxiety of...
..and the stress that I was growing up with
and what "the secret" puts on you, you know.
The little girl standing at the back of the butcher who couldn't say dad.
Yeah! "Hey, Dad!" You know, "How you going?"
And then forever after that, it would be...
I'd regularly call him and we'd talk.
Then five years later I went back and went up to see him,
and he was getting a little bit sick.
And then when we were leaving,
I took my daughter up, me and her went up.
I give him a wave, and he's shutting the gate and I go to go
and I stop and stall and I...
I jump out and I ran up to the fence as he's putting the thing,
and I said, "I love ya, old man."
And he went, "Yep."
And he turned around and I've turned around
and I cried all the way to Blackbutt.
And did Dad ever say "I love you" back?
No. No.
So you're this little girl from Murgon,
and then you find yourself in Police Rescue,
one of the big TV shows.
Nicky, you live with a child that's been bullied for weeks.
That was when I first came to... to Sydney,
and I think I was the only blackfella on TV at that stage.
Well, he didn't tell me.
If I was you, I'd wonder why.
I've heard that you regularly sent money home.
Oh, yeah, always. Still do.
(LAUGHS) That's what blackfellas... we got no bank account.
(LAUGHS) No, and, look...
And that's... and that's family,
and that's... that's how it rolls.
What about you singing the national anthem at State of Origin?
Yeah, I did love performing the national anthem,
especially at the State of Origin - I love my footy.
Yeah.
I loved standing next to the footy players,
smelling the Deep Heat,
knowing the pressure that they were under.
You know, and I wanted to sing it great for them,
to give them a good send-off, you know?
Were you nervous?
Oh, nervous as, mate. Oh, man.
Oh, yeah, nervous as. Yeah.
Was there a little bit of political stuff come in, you know...
Yeah, look, I've always been very aware
that the second verse of the national anthem is quite racist,
you know.
Yes, it's words that are foreign,
that aren't really us and they don't speak the truth.
But I'm on national TV, and I'm reaching hundreds of thousands...
And little girls at home... Little girls.
Aboriginal girls are going... Yeah, girls can go...
.."I can..." .."Maybe I can do that."
So that was my real motivation,
and to show those little girls or little boys,
black or white, from struggle street,
if I can do it,
that I hope that I give hope to someone that...
..think that they can't get out of the rut that they're in.
Yep.
Would I do it now? Probably not.
I think there's a lot to be done politically in this country still
with our black and white relations.
What's beautiful is there is... there is still that groundswell out there.
It's just our leaders that need to wake up and take off the blinkers
and not be so naive and ignorant.
You recently won the Victorian Prize for Literature.
Yeah. Australia's richest literary prize.
From a girl who wrote a whole story with one sentence, no full stops...
Yeah. And you've just won.
What a journey!
That to me was like I... I've made it. I'd done.
My peers have said, "You're alright, kid," you know?
That was unreal.
You know I had that Drover's Wife story within me for 42 years.
My mum used to read it to me when I was a little girl.
Grab the book off the shelf,
and I went to my partner,
and I said, "I'm writing the next play."
I said, "It's gonna be Drover's Wife,"
I said, "but I'm not gonna reread it.
"I'm gonna sit it here and see what I remember."
And away I went.
You've won a whole bunch of awards. Oh, there was about... all up, 14.
Wow.
And that was a couple of acting ones in there,
for the play and for the screenplay.
But, mate, we cleaned up, at the AWGIES.
I only went to the AWGIES - that's the Australian Writers' Guild -
because I felt good about winning those prizes
so I wanted to sit with my peers.
I was happy with just dessert, mate.
Yeah.
And I turned to my partner when we got home, and I went,
"I did alright, eh? That's..."
I said, "I... I've graduated. I've graduated."
(LAUGHS)
Leah credits her success and survival
to her partner of 27 years, Bain.
He's been her rock, her manager, and a loving father
to her daughter, Amanda.
Tell me about your daughter.
She's given me two beautiful grandsons, 10 and 7,
and she keeps me sane.
Yeah. I've got her back, she's got mine.
I love her.
Leah, after all you've been through,
what do you think this thing called life is about?
Havin' a crack. (LAUGHS) Yeah?
I do, I believe life is about having a go,
taking risks, feeling the fear.
I love fear.
Don't be afraid to be afraid of something.
Everything can't be smooth sailing.
You go through hardships to... to learn who you are.
I was born this colour for a reason.
I've felt racism from both sides for a reason.
Mate, I am who I am because of this journey,
and I'm... I'm very lucky to be in an industry
that I love what I do.
Mm-hm.
I was at the Cannes Film, International Film Festival
buying shoes in Nice, you know, Francais.
"Eh, oui, oui." You know, "Hoh, hoh, hoh," you know?
Flying business class, you know.
And a part of you wishes you could fly your mum...
Oh. Mate. ..business class.
In a beat, in a heartbeat.
Just to show her the world.
You know, one of her dying wishes or on her list,
was to drive a car.
So we... so we put her on a motor... What do you call it?
Victa lawn mower, the ride-on?
And she drove it, mate. She was pretty good too.
Really? You know.
Did you do that near the end? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The kids, we were tormenting and running beside her and all that.
Your mum sounds like so much fun.
Yeah, and she rode that mower like she stole it.
(BOTH LAUGH)
You know what, Leah?
I'm really enjoying painting this. Yeah.
I'm gonna need another maybe half hour or so,
to finish it off real good.
And then I'll bring you back and I'll show you the...
..the Leah Purcell with crazy hair.
Yes! (LAUGHS)
I can't wait. Thank you.
He was good. It was great.
It was like we were just sitting around at home and chewing the fat.
I'm hoping what Anh got through our conversation
and what's landed on the canvas
is the truth in who I am.
There's a saying that I like to say and it's "Stand in your truth."
So I just... I hope he's captured that as well.
Leah Purcell is a dynamic and creative force of nature.
She's built a life and career well beyond
what that little girl from Murgon could've dreamt.
Her strong connection to family and culture
have helped her understand herself,
and helped inspire her as an artist.
She's a big personality, full of spirit and love.
I hope I've captured all of that in this portrait.
Let's bring her back in.
OK, Leah, I'm done.
Alright. Come on back.
Um, firstly, I'm quite happy with it.
Awesome. That's always a good thing. (LAUGHS)
I'm not always happy but, you know, you have an inner joy about you.
Good.
So I've tried to make you glow a little bit.
Excellent! You have great hair.
Oh, awesome.
So I went even probably over the top with the hair.
But it's kind of fun and joyous. That's what I was hoping you'd do.
They said, "What do you wish for?"
I said big hair, and joy or passion coming through the eyes.
Is that right? So there you go.
There's a happiness inside you. So, Leah, I want you to close your eyes.
Woo-hoo!
I'm hard to surprise. I'm very excited about this.
Keep your eyes closed... Alright.
..until I tell you...
OK, Leah, go for it.
I'm not ready. I'm going to take my time.
Oh, wow!
She's hot! (LAUGHS)
That's awesome!
I love the hair. Look at that hair.
Yeah, I had fun with that!
Do you see the likeness? Yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I can see her, she's wise too. Yes.
And there's just something about you, you know?
Yeah. (LAUGHS)
No, that's awesome! (LAUGHS)
Nah, the colours and everything. Green's my favourite colour.
Awesome. The lips are perfect - she's cool.
You're very cool. (LAUGHS)
Love it.
Thanks for coming on the show, Leah. No, thank you.
Thank you for sharing so much with us.
Thank you. I've really enjoyed it.
Cuddles! Oh, awesome.
I love it. He did a fantastic job.
I'm blown away at the speed in his ability.
You know, Anh's such a great person to be interviewed by.
It helps when someone that you're talking to really listens
and really is passionate about hearing your story.
So it's been a fabulous day.
Anytime! Call me up!
Get a painting done. (LAUGHS)
I really enjoyed listening to Leah
share her life journey with me today.
And I hope she keeps gathering and telling stories
for many years to come.
Next time...
..Walter Mikac's courage in the face of devastating tragedy,
has shaped the Australia we live in today.
She pleaded with the gunman for the children's lives.
She said, "Please don't kill my children."
And, um... he shot her, and then he shot the children.
The portrait needs to reflect his quiet strength and inner kindness.
Oh, wow!