Sussan Ley's childhood was spent moving from place to place, following her father, who worked for British intelligence, around the world.
Born to British parents in Nigeria, her family moved to the United Arab Emirates when she was one.
"We'd wait for my dad to come home and tell us what he'd been doing, which was chasing bandits, arresting people with caches of arms and drugs and you know I just thought that's what dads did," she said.
At the age of 10, she was sent to a boarding school in England while her parents remained in the UAE. She says she experienced culture shock, and felt like an outsider in England.
"I was completely different. I had different clothes, a different accent. People talked about music, I had no idea about. So it was all very strange."
In 1974, when she was 13-years-old, her family immigrated to Australia, buying a hobby farm in Queensland.
"I didn't consider politics. If you had asked me then - what did I want to do - I would have said I want to fly an airplane. [Entering politics] seemed like a fairly remote possibility."
Sussan Ley in Parliament. Source: AAP
She did pursue a career in aviation, obtaining her commercial pilot’s license at the age of 20. It now helps her to get around her electorate, which is nearly 250,000 square kilometres- about the same size as New Zealand.
Ms Ley say the land is one of the reasons she loves her seat of Farrer, in rural New South Wales.
"To me the deserts of the Middle East give me the connection to my country. One of the reasons I love the outback so much is because it reminds me of where I grew up," she said.
Ms Ley says she doesn't believe in making fixed plans for the future, and as such, her path to politics was far from conventional. She spent 17 years working full time on the farm with her husband, and developed a passion for public service after the birth of her first child.
"I started university at age 30, which was really the beginning of a long journey of understanding about why I wanted to contribute to the economic future of rural Australia and how I might best do that, and politics became that pathway."
Finding home
Having spent time living in so many different places, Ms Ley says it's hard to pinpoint one place to call 'home'.
"Thirty-five years after I flew out of that cold boarding school from London and landed in the bright sun of Brisbane. I went to London. And when I stepped out at Heathrow, I immediately thought - I'm home," she said.
"But I also know when I went back to Dubai only very briefly I also thought I was home, and I also know the country I would miss the most if I was anywhere else would be Australia."
"I would never presume to suggest what may or may not be Australian."
Ms Ley says that Albury's long history with migrants is sometimes forgotten. The nearby suburb of Bonegilla in Victoria was the largest and longest operating migrant reception centre in the post-war era.
She says she was disappointed by protests against the building of mosques in the area.
"I don't want anyone's story in this country to mean that they aren't part of what it means to be Australian. It's all part of who we are," she said.
"I would never presume to suggest what may or may not be Australian. I think that's because I'm a migrant to this country. It's not that I feel that I'm a visitor. But I feel the enormous privilege of having come... with no patronage, no money, no profile, to be able to enter the Australian parliament and be part of one of the world's best democracies.
"I think that underscores a lot of what it means to be Australian because this is a land of opportunity like absolutely no other."
The three-part documentary 'DNA Nation' premieres on SBS on Sunday 22 May at 8.30pm, and afterwards on SBS On Demand.
What makes us who we are? SBS Explores Identity is taking a look at what makes us who we are through a series of stories, news and programs. Discover more here.
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