FOREWORD
On conscription
“I am no saint or would-be martyr and I live as I have to live. Yet I am convinced that life is not worth living if one is not, at least on the important issues, the master of one’s own decisions. If others can make me kill and maim against conscience, I am less a man, a beast to be used and manipulated. Thus, I could fight in Vietnam only if I considered it a just cause ..."
From a letter written by a conscript, Geoff Mullen, addressed to the Australian Government in 1967 and published in his Sydney Morning Herald article of March 30, 1969
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On the stolen children
“At the age of four, I was taken away from my family and placed in [a] Home – where I was kept as a ward of the state until I was eighteen years old. I was forbidden to see any of my family or know of their whereabouts…”
“While I was walking through the bush the police and Welfare were going out to the camp which they had found in the bush. I was so upset that I didn't walk along the Highway. That way the Welfare would have seen me. The next day I knew that the Welfare had taken my brothers and sisters… “
From the Australian Government’s Bringing Them Home Report , The Report of the National Inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families.
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On forced adoptions
“I believe that a good environment will make a better job of bad genes … It is [a bad] environment which pushes the sinfulness into these babies. Adoption brings joy to the adopting parents and the prospect of a better life to the child …. The last thing the obstetrician should concern himself with is the law in regard to adoption.” D.F. Lawson M.B. F.R.C.S., F.R.C.O.G. Medical Society Hall East Melbourne August 19, 1958 in Overview of Adoption in Australia
“Upon the adoption order being finalized … the original Birth certificate was sealed away forever and was never to be released. The mother and child were forbidden by law to ever know each other’s names ….” Dian Welfare, Adoption Rights Campaigner (1951-2008)in Overview of Adoption in Australia
Between the 1950s and 1970s, approximately 150,000 Australian unwed mothers had their babies taken against their will by churches and adoption agencies. The report by a Senate inquiry investigating the Commonwealth government's involvement in past forced adoption practices was tabled in the upper house on the 29th February 2012.
PROLOGUE
Goodna (Brisbane) 1950
‘I should never have told you!’ Miki wailed.
‘So you actually did it?’ said Jude.
They were sitting together on the wooden bench, which wrapped around the big peppercorn tree down at the far end of the schoolyard. All through their lunch hour she had been begging Jude to act sensibly, forget about what she told her and pose for the camera. All she needed was for the idiot to stand under the tree––with their school building in the background––and then go down to the big gates and stand in front of them looking outwards. Jude beneath the fancy iron gates of St Benedicts Catholic College for Girls staring out at their future was the picture she needed most, her main shot, her metaphor.
'You let him put it in?'
'Quit it!'
Jude, the lunatic. She hadn't expected her dearest, closest friend to make fun of her, she thought as she watched Jude laying on her back writhing around, touching herself down there through her tunic and staring up at the sky as if Clark Gable were about to fall into her arms. Her long hair trailed in the dust. Too bad. Even if ants crawled into it and ate her brains out, she wasn’t going to tell her. At this moment, she didn’t even like Jude. She liked herself even less.
‘Did it hurt?’ said Jude, springing up, alert and ready to be shocked. ‘Was there blood, Mik? What did you do while he was doing it, that’s what I want to know, that’s the bit I can never work out. What did you actually do? Did you just lie there and let him put it in? Did you scream or anything? Do you talk when it’s in there? Come on, spill the beans! You have to tell! You have to. It’s me, remember!’
Words tumbling over themselves, Jude making her feel awful. Not meaning to.
‘God! I can’t believe this!’ said Jude. ‘Miss Goody-Two-Shoes! You’ve actually gone and done it! And I haven’t! You actually beat me to it, you know what it feels like to have it in there, have a boy inside you!’ Jude leapt off the bench and threw out her arms, spinning herself around in a full circle. ‘World, I don’t believe it!’ she called out.
Neither did she, thought Miki, and if her mother hadn’t sent her over to the Manning’s after school to collect the pay envelope Mrs Manning had forgotten to leave on the sideboard that afternoon it would never have happened. Her mother’s wages. Doctor Leonard T. Manning’s house.
‘Was it huge, Mik?’
‘Shut up!’ A rush of blood to her cheeks.
‘Like a palace inside, I bet.’
She had to admit, she had been impressed by the Manning’s house. It was bigger than any house she had ever been in before, overflowing with furniture and stuffed cushions, vases and china things that looked as though they were sitting around waiting for someone to tell them why they were there, someone to do something with them other than just pass by them in the hall. The house felt like a museum, so big and only him and his parents living in it. So much furniture for her poor mother to polish every week. That had been her biggest impression of the Manning mansion. Fancy mirrors everywhere. She was struck by why people would need so many mirrors unless it was to make it look as if there were really more people in there than just the three of them rattling around in the big place.
‘So no one was home when you went around there, right? Except, of course, young Donald.’ Jude skipped backwards, dancing in a circle around Miki. ‘Donny, Oh Donny, Donny,’ she teased, pressing both hands to her heart and tossing her head back, her eyes rolling to heaven.
‘Come on, Jude, stand still for me, please? For the tenth time?’ Miki pleaded, waving her Box Brownie in the air. ‘You said you’d do this.’
‘Everyone knows you’ve had a mad crush on Donald Manning. Ever since the sports carnival.’ She turned to Miki, grinning. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? It’s those big hairy legs, those muscles. Oh, Donny, Donny, hold me in your arms and never let me go.’
Miki felt her lunch come up into her throat and for an instant, imagined she might vomit or pass out. She gave Jude a shove.
‘Before the bell goes. Come on.’ She had Drama with Miss Batson after lunch and wanted to clean up before class went in. They were performing the first two scenes from Act iii of Romeo and Juliet and it was her turn to give the talk. At least Romeo and Juliet was something she wanted to talk about. There was nothing she wanted to say about Donald Manning.
