Growing up in Townsville, rugby league was all that Kuku-Yalanji and Kalkadoon man Tareq Parter knew.
He watched his Aboriginal heroes Johnathan Thurston and Greg Inglis play in the National Rugby League on television and hung posters of them on his wall.
He, like a lot of other Indigenous kids around Australia, didn't know many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stars playing rugby union.
"My family [loved league]; the area, the schools were big league schools," Parter said.
"I think there wasn't as many pathways or exposure to rugby union as there is in other parts of Australia.
"I think a big part of it is the role models you have in league … you have so many people that you can relate to and aspire to be like, and there is those in rugby union as well, but not as many."
Now, Parter is part of a new program hoping to change that, and is in Canberra playing rugby union properly for the first time.
The ACT Brumbies First Nations Pathway program — which is the first of its kind in the Super Rugby — invited four young Indigenous men from across Australia to move to the capital and do pre-season with the main squad, then continue training with the academy.
It's a specific program that Parter said targeted the needs of young First Nations' people.
"Mob are usually very tight knit and don't like being away from family and like it's very hard for people to move away sometimes," Parter said.
"Just having each other, having a group of us not just one of us come down, it's been a lot easier to really lean on each other and get that support.
"Hopefully with things like the Brumbies program here, it's starting to change and starting to see more of our mob in rugby union as well."
'Maybe union is for me'
Just six current players in the Super Rugby Pacific competition have Indigenous Australian heritage and only 14 have represented the Wallabies since 1938.
One of those Super Rugby players is the Brumbies's Andy Muirhead, who has been a big advocate for Indigenous rugby.
He said having more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander players at the top level would help participation numbers.
"I think that you'll have a lot more kids looking and watching TV and saying, 'hey, look, I want to be like a Harrison Goddard playing for the Waratahs or an Andy Muirhead playing for the Brumbies'," Muirhead said.
"There's a lot of talent out there, it's actually quite freaky when you go out and watch the rugby league knockout, the Ella 7s, those sorts of things.
"Hopefully they see pathways like us … and then say 'look, that could be me next year. I'm a 16, 17-year-old coming out of school playing rugby league at the moment but maybe union is for me'."
As for Parter and the other four members of this season's program, reaching the top level is the end target.
"That's the goal, that's why we're here, we're pursuing that professional rugby union career," Parter said.
"They've [the Brumbies] helped me out with my uni, they've helped me out with work, there's more to life than just playing footy and we're aware of that.
"But obviously we all want to be pushing for that Brumbies jersey one day."
