STOLEN AT FOUR AND A HALF*

Rob McKinnon

He and his mother had become sick
when he was four and a half
and she had taken him to hospital.
They persuaded her to leave him
at a home for babies until she was better
but social welfare said she was unfit to look after him
and they took him from her.

For the next few years he would move between orphanages and foster homes.
He was often reminded of the colour of his skin,
teasing by cruel children
meant he would never feel like he belonged anywhere.
Christian foster parents would severely scald him
at any slight indiscretion he felt the pain of belt leather.

His mother never gave up looking for him,
she would often write letters to the state welfare departments
pleading with them to give her son back.
All her letters were treated with disregard
making the anguish of her separation more intense.
She kept sending birthday and Christmas cards
but none were passed onto him.

When he was eighteen
he was requested to attend a welfare office.
The senior officer gave him a file
that contained the story of his life
told in hundreds of pages of welfare department reports.
He cried when he opened the cards from his mother,
the reminders of the life the state had taken away from him.

Without offering any console
or apology for the treatment he had undergone,
the welfare officer passed him a handwritten note
with his mother’s current address.
She was working in a hostel for Aboriginal children
with twenty children under her care.
They only had six more years before she died.

*Based on Confidential evidence 133, Bringing Them Home, The National Inquiry into the
Forced Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, 1997