There were holes punched in the walls, the sink was smashed and Fiona Dace-Lynn had a broken hand.
She had just punched her partner, retaliating after years of violence and abuse, and she knew she had to get out.
She bundled her two young daughters into the car, and, as they drove away in the darkness, and she could see her abuser chasing after them in the rearview mirror, she knew she'd hit rock bottom.
Ms Dace-Lynn was in her mid-20s, and about to become homeless for the second time in her life.
Today, Ms Dace-Lynn is director of Trade Skills at the Canberra Institute of Technology - a high-ranking woman in a sea of male tradies.
In her 50s, tall and confident in a cream suit, she wants everyone to know that if this kind of scenario can happen to her, it can happen to anyone.
A teenage mum, Ms Dace-Lynn was living in Brisbane and had two children by the time she was 18.
"I came down to Canberra to visit my parents, and I got a message from my husband saying 'Don't come back'," she said.
"It is hard with a one and two-year-old for anybody, but for young parents it was really hard, and I think for him it was just easier for him to run away at that stage, so that was the first time that I experienced homelessness."
Her next relationship - the one she fled - lasted six years, and featured drug abuse and violence.
"These things, as everybody knows, they're not just an instant thing that happens - it happens over a few years, and you realise once you're in the depths of it," she said.
"It got to the stage where I had to get out, and I had to get out really quickly, and so I just fled.
"The issue at that stage was even though I have a very supportive family, my mum was going through brain surgery, and my nephew was having open heart surgery, and I sort of went, 'How on earth can I burden them with this as well?'."
She said even her parents didn't know how bad things had become, and probably still don't.
"Being a single parent with two small children, no skills, no education, there had been times when we'd been really living below the poverty line, and so we had reached out [to St Vincent de Paul] previously for food vouchers and some support for things like Christmas hampers."
With the help of Vinnies, she was allocated public housing in Canberra, and was accepted into the Australian National University school of art.
"I've always really firmly believed that education is a way out. Once I got into art school, I was still dealing with all of this stuff, but I suddenly had a different purpose and a different focus," she said.
Her studies led to a casual position at CIT as an art teacher, and she later became head of the art department. Eventually, the institute asked her to run the trades department.
It made sense at the time; having studied sculpture, she was used to large machines and conceptual thinking.
It was a long way from priority housing lists and food vouchers, but Ms Dace-Lynn has only recently begun reflecting on how far she's come.
"To people who are experiencing this at the moment, or even people who are teenage mums - it feels so hard at the moment, but this is only temporary, this is only now," she said.
"I fully believe, as well, that education is the way out - you've just got to find your thing.
"There are so many things you can do out there, and you've just got to put your foot in the door and just go one day at a time, and that's the way out. Give you your life purpose and meaning."
She also wanted people to think twice about the homeless - the people they pass in the street, sometimes several times a day.
There were even some students at CIT who were homeless or doing it tough.
"It can happen to anybody. It happened to me and it happened to me twice, and I think that's a really important message to put out there in the Canberra community as well," she said.
"The people we walk past every day, who might be sitting outside a shop begging, they're part of our community, and you have no idea of what their story is, or how they got there, but we've all got a responsibility to look after our community."
Last year, she agreed to participate in the annual Vinnies CEO Sleepout, the high-profile fundraising event where business, government and community leaders spend one of the longest and coldest nights of the year sleeping outdoors.
In Canberra, it's on the steps of Old Parliament House. The idea is to raise money to help fight homelessness in Australia, and Ms Dace-Lynn thought it would be a good opportunity to raise awareness about the need for more women in trades.
"It wasn't until we were sitting at Old Parliament House on the night of the sleepout, that I started to fish back in my head a little bit, and open up a few memories that I've probably left behind," she said.
"You think that's in the past - I've moved on, I'm doing really quite well, I'm very happy, and have a good life. But last year, during the CEO Sleepout, there were a couple of things I realised, and I think my story can help."
