User:MountLawley/sandbox

Early life
Dowling was born at the King Edward Memorial Hospital for Women in the Perth suburb of Subiaco.

Her identical twin sister, Carol, is an academic and radio documentary producer.

Their single mother, Veronica, is a Badimaya whose traditional lands are around Paynes Find and Yalgoo in Western Australia's Gascoyne region.

Along with her mother, she was strongly influenced by her maternal grandmother, Molly, who taught her much about her traditional culture; Molly had been taken from the Yalgoo area by her Irish father at the age of eleven and sent to a Catholic orphanage.

The twins spent their early childhood with their mother and extended family, including Molly, in the outer Perth suburb of Redcliffe when it was mostly bushland.

Her mother and the twins constantly moved between public houses around the Perth metropolitan area to escape welfare agencies who tried to take the children away.

While on train trips to visit their grandmother, their mother would point out people who might be trying to hide their Aboriginality, and would encourage Julie to sketch them while Carol would interview them.