A Stolen Life

by Antonio Buti

  The warmer weather of Adelaide suits the family well. Martha in a very short time is looking healthier and has put on much-needed weight from the 39 kilograms she weighed on arriving in Australia. Economically, the future looks good, and with Martha’s health so much improved, the family is happy. To their amazement and delight, Martha falls pregnant. She gives up working at the biscuit factory to prepare for the arrival of their second child, Jayne, who comes into the world in August 1956. They are overjoyed to have a baby sister for Carol, but they still feel the need for another child. Back home in England they had fostered two girls, and Frank and Martha have always known that, when properly settled, they would again turn their minds to fostering. So they take particular note of an article in the Adelaide Advertiser which reports that the Aborigines Protection Board is seeking foster homes for four Aboriginal babies. The Board has recently brought the babies to Adelaide from Aboriginal settlements. They are now in Adelaide Children’s Hospital and McBride Maternity Hospital.

  There are two baby boys and one girl, who are each about six months old. The other girl is only six weeks old. The article excites Martha and Frank. Eagerly, they respond to the call for foster parents. This is what has brought them to Adelaide Children’s Hospital on 6 January; however, the infant they will see is not one of those four children.

  Bruce is now feeling much better. His bowel is settling down and he is feeding well. He has been on full milk since before New Year’s Day. Tests of his faeces show no pathogenic organisms.

  Hospital staff bring Martha and Frank to see a thirteen-month-old infant, with blond hair and a tan complexion. They say the baby’s mother has gone walkabout, leaving the child with family members who do not look after or feed the child. The family has abandoned and neglected the baby, they say.

  Martha and Frank agree to take the baby home. There is no paperwork. Just take the baby with you, the staff say. In their excitement, Martha and Frank don’t even think to ask the baby’s name, and neither the hospital staff nor the officer from the Aborigines Protection Board offers one. The officer from the Board does not bother to check whether Martha is a licensed foster mother.

  Carol, now sixteen years old and in work, is home when her parents bring the baby back with them. She shares her mum and dad’s excitement. Young Jayne, nearly eighteen months old, is oblivious to the fuss. The fuss turns to astonishment when Martha changes the child’s nappy for the first time. The baby they thought was a girl is in fact a baby boy. His name, they will find out later, is Bruce.

  Sergeant Liebing is reading a letter from the office of the Secretary of the Aborigines Protection Board, dated 15 January 1958. It is written by a Mrs Marjory Angas, the chief welfare officer of the Board. She wants to know why Bruce was admitted to Adelaide Children’s Hospital and ‘where the mother was at the time’. On 28 January, Liebing pencils a reply.

  He tells the Board that his enquiries reveal that Mr and Mrs Evans had taken Bruce to the hospital in Adelaide. He reports that Thora had left the home and, although she claims she left the children with her brother and sister-in-law, he doubts this because on his visit to the Trevorrow shack a few days before Christmas he saw Bruce and another child there. He writes that Thora had left after arguing with Joe, but wrongly says the argument was over Joe’s eldest son, Joseph, who he had recently arrested. Sergeant Liebing does not know about James Clarke and how he had upset the harmony of the Trevorrow household.

  Liebing does not report any concern with the welfare of the children and concludes his letter by saying that, at his visit to the shack before Christmas, Joe ‘did not make any complaint to me regarding this child’s health’.

  In early February, Martha receives the necessary application form to act as foster mother to Bruce. The form has been sent from the Aborigines Protection Board to the Child Welfare Department and then on to Martha. A couple of weeks later the Board meets to discuss the maintenance requirements of five children, including Bruce. It agrees that Martha will receive maintenance payments for his care.

  Martha is enjoying being a stay-at-home mother, caring for Jayne and Bruce. Carol enjoys coming home from work to her two baby siblings. Bruce is now very much part of the family.

  The Davies family has no idea how different things are down on the Coorong. Thora is heartbroken. She has returned to live with Joe but things are tense. Bruce’s absence is tearing the heart out of the family and they have not heard from the Evanses or from the hospital about how he is. When he comes home from work, Joe often starts crying and calling out for his ‘little Brucey’.

  A routine visit to the shack by John Weightman, a welfare officer from the Aborigines Protection Board, on 17 March does nothing to alleviate their distress. Thora and Joe ask if he knows where Bruce is, but he says he doesn’t know. His report to the chief welfare officer notes that Joe is employed, the house is reasonably clean and tidy, and Tom, who was home at the time, was ‘warmly clad and only a little dirty from playing’. He does say that the living conditions at the shack are far from ideal, but he ‘could not recommend that any child be committed due to the unsatisfactory nature of the home’.

  This is cold comfort to the Trevorrows. Unbeknownst to them, Bruce now lives with the Davies at 6 Braemar Avenue, Campbelltown, in Adelaide, over two hours drive from One Mile Camp. Meanwhile, at Coorong, his biological mum and dad, his brothers and sister are in anguish.

  Chapter 4

  CHASING A MOONBEAM

  Thora is lost. Lost to anger and guilt in equal measure. You can see her form in the shack at One Mile Camp, but she is not there. Just as you can see the form of Joe though he, too, is not there. Lost to grief and despair.

  By the time winter arrives, Thora is married to a man named Cyril Karpany. It is an impulsive, hopeless act. She couldn’t tell you why she has married him. ‘Just didn’t work out with Joe.’

  She has known Cyril for some time, not well, certainly not intimately. If she intended to punish Joe by marrying Cyril, it was not necessary. Joe is already punishing himself and needs no further provoking. Moreover, Thora will not assuage her guilt nor relieve her anguish at losing Bruce by seeking solace in the arms of another man. A most unsuitable man.

  Thora will have three children with Cyril: Karen, Cyril Junior and Devon. He will treat them well enough. But not Hilda, George and Tom. They are not his kids, they belong to Joe. When they come to stay with their mother, he treats them badly. Especially when he is drunk, and that is often. In his drunken rages, he will belt George and Tom, though George is a special target because he tries to protect Thora, who is not safe from Cyril’s drunken violence either.

  In the midst of this hell, Thora is no closer to finding her lost Brucey. Where is he? Desperate for some relief from her anguish, she sits down at the kitchen table on 25 July 1958 and writes a pleading letter to Mrs Angas at the Aborigines Protection Board. She has written to the Board before, to no avail. Perhaps a personal letter to Mrs Angas will be more productive. After all, she too is a woman. She surely will understand a mother’s torment.

  How does she convey her torment? How does she tell Marjory Angas she is pining for her baby? Her letter is brief and to the point.

  Dear Mrs Angas

  I am writing to ask if you will let me know how baby Bruce is and how long before I can have him home as I have not forgot I got a baby in there and I would like something defenat about him this time trust you will let me know as soon as possible.

  Yours faithfully

  Thora

  Meningie

  Thora neatly folds the letter into an envelope and next morning walks to the Meningie Post Office. She hopes she will get a reply quickly. She doesn’t. Thora’s letter lies on Mrs Angas’s desk unread. No hurry. Mrs Angas knows what it will say. But what will she say in reply to Thora?

  Winter is coming to an end. The nights are still cold on the Coorong but the brisk early mornings and bright sunlight signal that spring is coming. At last, on a crisp pre-spring morning, Thora, h
er heart pounding, grasps the envelope that has just arrived from the Aborigines Protection Board. With trembling hands, she tears it open.

  The Secretary of the Board has signed the letter that Mrs Angas has written. It bears a date of 19 August 1958. Slowly, Thora reads and the words are like a bullet to her heart: ‘Bruce is making good progress but as yet the doctor does not consider him fit to go home.’

  Thora is shattered. What doctor? How sick is Bruce? It has been eight months since the Evanses drove him to hospital. If he is too unwell to come home, surely the hospital should tell his mother. What is the problem? Where is her Bruce?

  Mrs Angas is not about to tell her. The letter ends, ‘I understand that you have consulted Mr Millar and agreed that your children would be cared for by Mrs Vizard.’ That is Aunty Emily Vizard, Joe’s sister. She stays at the shack at Three Mile Camp, where Joe and the children now spend most of their time, helping to care for Hilda, George and Tom. Joe’s other sisters, Margaret Coffey and Isabel Koolmatrie, known as Aunty Bell, also help out. His two eldest daughters, Rita Lindsay and Alice Abdulla, also come over to Three Mile Camp to help. Joe is making sure his children are well cared for. But where is his Bruce? Joe has a broken heart; he cries out loud for his Brucey. Before he lost him, Joe rarely touched alcohol. Now he drinks. Not often, only when the fisherman he works for gives him a bottle of wine. He is not a heavy drinker, not a drunk, not a Cyril Karpany.

  The year drags on to its desolate end for Joe and Thora, separated from each other through anger, guilt and recrimination. Only their grief binds them. The year ends as it began, with neither of them having any idea where Bruce is. Joe, in fact, has stopped looking. He is just too heartbroken and doesn’t know where to go for answers. Defeated in spirit, he will leave it to Thora.

  Life with Cyril is tough for Thora. He works for the railways authority, which means the family is constantly on the move. They live in accommodation that the railways authority provides, in places such as Victor Harbor, Tailem Bend, Murray Bridge and Kingston. Thora doesn’t mind the moving around, but Cyril’s drunken behaviour is making her life unbearable. Matters come to a head in March 1959. Not for the first time, the police are called to the household as a drunken Cyril violently abuses his wife. This time, finally, the court sends him to jail for six months. It is only a temporary respite.

  Thora gains intermittent joy from the regular visits from Hilda, George and Tom, but the pain of Bruce’s absence is constant. She desperately wants to know where he is, how he is, and she wants him home with her, right now. Nobody in authority heeds her despairing cries. Nobody cares about a mother heartlessly separated from the little boy she loves. She keeps asking, ‘When can I see him? When can I have him back?’

  On 15 May 1959, the Aborigines Protection Board writes to Joe, requesting that he place George and Tom in the care of the Board as ‘this would be in his children’s best interests’. Constable Goldie, the police officer now in charge of Meningie Police Station, follows up with a visit to Joe at Three Mile Camp reiterating the request. Joe is emphatic: ‘No.’ He will not lose another of his children to the authorities. Thora is visiting the children when Constable Goldie turns up. She asks him for answers about Bruce. He has none. However, he promises to follow up her enquiry.

  He keeps his promise, writing to Mrs Angas on 18 May. He tells her that Thora ‘has tried on numerous occasions to see the child, she has not been allowed to do so’, and asks her if Thora ‘would be allowed to see the child or not’. Mrs Angas is unsympathetic. On 27 May she drafts a letter for the Secretary of the Board to sign. In it she says unequivocally that Thora and Joe are not appropriate parents. They have lived together ‘for many years improperly’. They are not legally married.

  She claims the Department removed Bruce from Thora’s care because ‘she had left him in a critical condition’. It is, she says, ‘most unlikely’ that the Board’s Secretary would agree to Bruce ‘being returned to the mother as her home is not in any way satisfactory for the benefit of the child’s health’. Her one concession is that Thora could meet Bruce, though only in the presence of a welfare officer.

  The letter is uncompromising, consistent with other correspondence from the Aborigines Protection Board. As far back as 19 June 1957, before Bruce was removed, Mrs Angas drafted a letter under the cover of the Secretary that was damning of the Trevorrows.

  We understand the father of Meningie is illiterate and a habitual drunkard. He has a defacto wife. There are several illegitimate children of this union. The father has no permanent employment. Conditions in this camp are reported as most undesirable for children. Periodically the mother is forced to leave home and seek assistance for herself and the children.

  Shortly after receiving the letter from Mrs Angas, Constable Goldie visits Thora. He tells her that the Aborigines Protection Board does not favour returning Bruce to her. She is devastated and confused. The heartache and pain remain.

  Chapter 5

  ‘I WILL LOSE MY FRIENDS AND MY BIKE’

  It is 20 November 1959, Bruce’s third birthday. He seems happy, playing with his presents and eating birthday cake in the seemingly tranquil world at 6 Braemar Avenue, Campbelltown. Three Mile Camp on the Coorong might well be a different universe. Yes, it is his birthday, but many happy returns are no certainty for this little boy. Today he is happy. On too many other days he is not. He could not tell you why this is, any more than he could tell you why he often pulls his hair, sometimes so forcefully that he removes big chunks of it. It probably hurts but if it does, he shows no sign. What does hurt is Martha growling at him for doing it. He cries and withdraws into his own lonely, little boy’s world.

  Martha is worried. Christmas is fast approaching and she knows she ought to be busy preparing for the festive day. Instead, Bruce’s behaviour is distracting her. She makes a doctor’s appointment.

  On 23 December, Bruce is anxious as they arrive at Adelaide Children’s Hospital. Does the hospital stir some deep-seated memory of what happened the last time he was here? The doctor plies Bruce with questions, questions for which he is too young to have answers. And Martha can’t help. The doctor can at least name the condition: it is called trichotillomania. He can get that from a textbook. He also can tell Martha that uncontrolled hair pulling can be a sign of incipient depression. What he cannot explain at this moment is why. What is overtaxing this little boy’s mind? Bruce can’t tell him; at just three years of age, how could he possibly know?

  As they wait for the bus to take them home, Martha buys Bruce an ice-cream cone, vanilla flavour. He devours it ravenously even before the bus arrives. If the visit to the doctor has disturbed him, Bruce doesn’t show it. They travel home in silence. But Martha is worried for him.

  Christmas comes and goes. The hospital visit and the doctor’s diagnosis are soon forgotten. Things seem to return to normal. The Davies family treats Bruce as one of its own. His blond hair and fair skin do not suggest he is anything other than their own flesh and blood. Bruce gets on particularly well with Carol. He enjoys sitting on her lap and being tickled. And he plays well with Jayne, who is just a few months older than him. He seems to have the idyllic life to which any three year old ought to be entitled.

  In early 1960, Carol leaves home to marry. She is eighteen years old and the marriage will last only a bit over a year, after which she will return to live at the family home. But now she has her own little boy, Peter, who was born in October 1960. Bruce seems to take the new little man in Carol’s life in his stride, and the next couple of years pass quickly before he heads off to the local primary school with Jayne. He now also has a younger brother named Glynn, who Martha gave birth to in 1961.

  Bruce is soon into the routine of school. He particularly enjoys the maths lessons but not English. Sometime in his middle primary school years, he will have two intelligence tests, scoring in the mid-average range but lower in the verbal scores. That is probably not surprising as Bruce has a speech impediment, diagnosed when he wa
s five. Martha and Frank arrange speech therapy at Adelaide Children’s Hospital and by the time he turns nine, he has it almost under control.

  Bruce likes classroom work well enough but much prefers to be outside, running around and kicking a football. In this he appears to be a normal little boy. Before long, Bruce’s football talents are on display for all to see. He is well coordinated when it comes to sport, being agile and a fluid runner. He does have some problems with fine motor skills, however, which make it difficult for him to use a pencil. Frank teaches Bruce how to box and play cricket. He loves this one on one with Bruce, who revels in the individual attention. In these Bruce shows he is a natural, though football is his game of choice, as it is for most of his school friends.

  In these early years, Bruce doesn’t look out of place in the Davies household. His skin is only slightly darker than the rest of the family and Martha can explain this convincingly. She tells him that some of her relatives overseas had darker complexions. Her father, she says, has either West Indian or Afro-American ancestry. Perhaps she almost convinces herself. An innocent enough deception of a little boy to make him feel like he belongs. Yet his blond hair is turning darker. So is his fair skin. As he grows older, his physical appearance becomes noticeably different from that of his family. Martha asks herself how long she can keep the truth from Bruce. ‘Not yet,’ she persuades herself. But reality can’t wait.

  ‘You know you are an Aborigine.’ Carol is walking her little brother to school and the words come out unbidden. They stop Bruce in his tracks. They don’t shock him—he’s too young to know what they mean—they just puzzle him. He looks at Carol and shrugs his shoulders.

  ‘If you get bullied at school, you let me know,’ Carol says. ‘I will sort them out.’

  As they continue walking Bruce admits that sometimes the other kids tease him because of his dark skin. ‘But most of the time things are okay,’ he says. They might tease him but Bruce is not unpopular. His football skills help him fit in. ‘I love playing footy with my friends,’ he tells Carol. Nevertheless, Carol’s revelation does bring into focus why he feels a bit different from his friends. ‘Yes,’ he allows to himself, ‘I am darker than the other kids.’