During his darkest chapter, things would go missing from Luke Bateman's apartment."My partner would come home from work and be like, 'Where's this?'" the former NRL player-turned-fantasy writer tells Australian Story."I would've taken it to Cash Converters and sold it for cash so I could go and gamble."It was 2019, and Bateman was at the height of a debilitating gambling addiction so severe he couldn't afford to feed himself It was about this time that he returned to one of his first loves, books."I started reading because I was doing a lot of therapy and I was starting to try and change my life," Bateman says.After coming out of rehab, Leanne and Don sat Bateman down and gave him an ultimatum: They would absorb his debts and he would go and work for Don in his logging business, which operated in remote locations in Queensland, to repay them.Bateman estimates his parents took on about $130,000 of his debt, which he recently paid off."It was a turning point that he was then out of Canberra, out of the culture [of gambling and drug-taking]," Leanne says.Living outside of the city came with unexpected benefits: it would take several years before Bateman had access to the internet from his campsite."All my gambling was done on my phone