AFL star Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti has revealed how he was abandoned by his mother and forced to roam the streets for food after the death of his grandmother.
The Essendon star, 26, who grew up on the Tiwi Islands north of Darwin, lost his father when he was just eight months old.
The death of his father sent his biological mother, Nola, into a tail spin as she began to drink and smoke a lot, McDonald-Tipungwuti said.
Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti was abandoned by his mother after the death of his father when he was eight months old
She left him outside the home crying and looking for her, prompting his grandmother to take him in.
‘I didn’t see much of my biological mum. She lived on the same island, just up the road, but she wasn’t interested in me,’ he told the Herald Sun.
He lived with his grandmother until the age of ten, when she passed away.
‘That’s when I found life very hard, from ten right through to 16. That’s when everything fell apart, because she was the only person that I knew that really cared about me. She looked after me, she loved me, and after she passed away it was the hardest time I’ve ever gone through, trying to find that person that would do what grandma had done for me,’ he said.
McDonald-Tipungwuti said he felt so alone during this point and he had no love or direction in his life.
He continued to live at his grandmother’s home under the care of his aunties, until it was decided he would live with his brother.
He lived with his grandmother until she died when he was ten and he moved in with his brother – who tasked him with looking after he one-year-old baby. Pictured with Conrad Sewell
McDonald-Tipungwuti’s brother was a decade older than him and had a one-year-old baby.
He tasked his younger brother with looking after the infant while he went out clubbing and drinking with the child’s mother.
The future forward was in and out of school – partly to look after his nephew and partly due to bullying.
He barely knew English and was teased for being a ‘loner’ and ‘dumb’.
‘I’d skip school all the time. I’d roam the streets and, in the end, I was on a collision course with bad things as there was no direction, no guidance and no way out in my mind. I was a bit scared of what was ahead,’ he said.
Things began to change for the teenager when a new school opened up there – the Tiwi College, where he would meet the woman he now calls ‘mum’.
Things began to change for the teenager when a new school opened up there – the Tiwi College, where he would meet the woman he now calls ‘mum’. Pictured with Jane McDonald
McDonald-Tipungwuti enrolled as you couldn’t play football at the school without being a student.
He said he rarely turned up unless their was a football competition.
Jane McDonald was helping out with some of the sporting teams there after moving to the island with her daughter following the death of her husband.
A small gesture from Ms McDonald – asking daughter Nikki to give McDonald-Tipungwuti socks so he could play in a match – made the footballer feel cared for in a way he hadn’t since his grandmother passed away.
He was eventually picked in the AFL rookie draft in 2015 and made his debut for Essedon the following year
‘It was then I wanted — and in a way I sort of knew — that mum was the person who was going to take care of me for the rest of my life,’ he said.
He would still see Nola, his biological mother, from time to time when he was in desperate need for food but rarely outside those times.
After spending Christmas with Ms McDonald and her family it was decided McDonald-Tipungwuti would stay with them forever.
Ms McDonald enrolled him in the same school as her biological children, looked after him and encouraged him to pursue his AFL dreams.
He was eventually picked in the AFL rookie draft in 2015 and made his debut for Essedon the following year.
He started his career as a half-back before becoming one of the sport’s best small forwards.