"There was a time, at age fifteen, when I didn't think I would be alive to see my eighteenth birthday. I'm now twenty-five and I've defied the odds.

Bronte Cullis was the Melbourne teenager whose battle with anorexia captured the hearts of Australians in a series of stories and documentaries by Ray Martin for the Nine Network.

On television, we watched in awe this girl who refused to eat. Years of tears and family frustrations followed. As Jan, Bronte's mother, said at the time: "Bronte doesn't have anorexia, our whole family has anorexia."

Bronte's parents were desperate. They knew their daughter was about to die unless they did something drastic. They mortgaged the family home, sold what they could and sent Bronte to the Montreux Clinic, an unconventional eating disorder clinic half a world away in Canada. It was Bronte's last chance at survival…

Bronte has kept diaries from the day she became sick with anorexia. This is her story.