I think what they – my cousins, aunts and uncles – saw was two adoptive parents who did their very best to love and cherish their adopted son. I always thought that they regarded me, their cousin, as a spoilt little show off. I think what they saw was a woman whom life had treated cruelly. (I can only imagine what it must be like to twice give birth to a dead child and to have miscarriage after miscarriage.) My adoptive mother invested far too much of herself in the one child she had the chance to rear, her adopted son; she was over-protective and over-mothering.

A few years ago I tried writing ‘the great Australian novel’. It was, of course, thinly autobiographical. Its opening scene pictured a 6 year old boy sitting on a sofa at his aunt’s house. The rest of the kids – my cousins – were outside playing Tiggy and Hide and Seek. I was on the sofa, writing. It was the first story I ever wrote, and it was called ‘The Farmer and the Crow’.

I think I have always felt ‘different’. I think I have always felt like an outsider. I used to think that it was because of something about me: that I was a strange little boy.

Looking back, I don’t think I was ‘spoilt’ – not in the material sense. It’s true that my parents made sacrifices to ensure that I received as much education as I could; they always said they wanted me to have more chances in life than they had had.

Maybe I felt like an outsider, and  felt I had to show off in order to get some attention; maybe I sat on that couch writing, not because I chose to do that, but because I wasn’t included in the games, and I didn’t feel part of the family. I knew, even as a 6 year old, that my parents – especially my mother – loved me too much. I knew that that was how the rest of the family saw it. Maybe the rest of the family felt I needed to be brought down a peg or two. Or maybe it was something deeper, to do with the fact that I was not really their blood cousin. Blood, they say, is thicker than water, and I wasn’t ‘blood’.

Nothing has changed; everything’s changed.

I’ve had a very tough two weeks or so since the truth of my adoption became known to me. I’ve had broken sleep, bouts of uncontrollable weeping. I’ve sent way for my real birth certificate, so that I can discover what I can about the woman who bore me and gave me breath. My children have rallied to support me. My eldest son found a PhD on the Internet, and sent it to me; it’s about ‘Australia’s White Stolen Generation’ – of which I am a part – children born of unmarried mothers who were hidden away in hostels run by the Methodists and the Salvos and the Catholics, where they were often forced to give up their babies. My middle son spent a day surfing the Net and turned up some background information on ‘The Haven’ – a Salvation Army Home for Unmarried Mothers. The Haven is in North Fitzroy. My 71 year old cousin remembers being in the car on the day I was collected from a ‘place near the city – there were tram lines’. The one piece of firm information I have about my birth mother is that she may have been a Salvo.

7.         Postscript

My youngest son came to tea with us last week. He brought dessert: Golden Syrup Dumplings that he’d cooked up for the meal. As luck would have it, there was a litre of Thickened Cream in the fridge. Karin, my best friend and partner, and our daughter Tanner had made Gratie ‘Taties.

It was a yummy meal.

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