'I can look pretty intimidating and I could tell (Ryan) was a bit daunted. I told him how, when I was 14, I accidentally shot my 12-year-old brother, Ross, in the testicles with an air rifle' | TWO OF US GoodWeekendMag
Filmmaker Ryan Gaskett, 38, is a quiet family man. Ten years ago, he met Leigh Conkie, 56, a chain-smoking chainsaw sculptor from Eltham who took drugs to dull the pain of childhood trauma. An unlikely friendship developed.
In 2014, I decided to climb Mount Fuji. Even though I smoked 40 cigarettes a day and could barely walk 200 metres, I wanted a challenge. Ryan, who was coming too, encouraged me to stop drinking. He exercised with me, and I lived on vegetable smoothies made with tap water. In 2016, I teamed up with a couple of schoolmates to bring our primary-school principal to justice. We were very young when he started molesting us. Talking about it with Ryan years later, remembering different details in each retelling, finally helped me get it off my chest. I’d never even told my parents. Seeing [Paul James Bussey] in court in 2017, he looked different to how I remembered. He was 70 and frail. One side of me wanted to forgive him, the other to hurt him. He got three years.
The following week, we talked for over an hour. I could see he was nervous, so we took breaks. He told me he’d been abused by a teacher when he was seven and how afterwards, when he went to the toilet and wiped himself, there was blood. In his teens, he’d punch himself in the head to try to forget. I was taken aback by what he told me, but also struck by the story he had to tell, by its darkness, but also its light.
Afterwards, his meds caused him to become “heightened”. He’d phone and whisper that his house was going to be bombed in an airstrike. He spent five weeks in a psych unit. I was scared that the Leigh we knew was gone forever, but when he started to crack jokes about his time on the ward, I knew he was coming back.
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