By the time of Jack’s birth, I knew that nothing I did could cause my mother Gwen pain or discomfort. She was living in a comfortable and secure place and was well protected from any adverse consequences that might come of me moving forward. So, in the months ahead, I began to ask myself questions about my birth mother. Was she still alive? If she was, would she want to meet me? Would I look like her? Which of her qualities had I inherited? Would meeting her give me insights into myself and deepen my understanding of my own life?
My longing for this meeting became intense, and I knew the time had come. I had finally realised, after 41 years, that I wanted to know where I came from.
During the latter part of 1992, after Jack was born, I regularly used to drive past the Department of Community Services office — the same office where I’d lodged the contact veto — on my way to attend meetings in the city. Now my thoughts turned to getting the veto lifted. To be honest, in my heart of hearts, I was increasingly disappointed that no attempt had been made to contact me. Despite the veto, I would have been notified if there had been an attempt. Was there anyone out there? Or had I left it too late? Without properly thinking through a plan of action, I decided to take the first steps: lift the contact veto, then get my original birth certificate.
With a rare moment to spare one day, I called in to the Rockdale office. It provided a range of government services, and anything related to adoption would have been a very small part of their work. For a while, I stood at the counter having second thoughts about whether I was doing the right thing. I felt quite insecure and wanted to be very private about this, which would be difficult, as I had a high profile in Sydney at the time.
A woman came to the counter, and I took a deep breath and launched into my quest. ‘Good afternoon. I’d like to speak to someone about proceeding with an adoption reunion process, please.’
The woman explained to me that the staff member who handled adoption issues wasn’t available that day. My heart sank, and I was sure the entire office heard it hit the floor.
‘Forgive me, but I have a very demanding job, and it’s difficult for me to get to the office. Is there anyone else who could help me?’ I pleaded.
‘I’ll go and ask my manager,’ the softly spoken woman responded, trying to be helpful. ‘Could I have your name, please?’
When I didn’t reply, she asked for my name again, louder now, and more audible to the other staff behind her at their desks. I had no choice but to bat on.
‘Robert Tickner,’ I said in muffled tones, looking down at my shoes and hoping no one else had heard.
She gave me an intrigued look, then quickly disappeared into a nearby office. I was hugely embarrassed to see a sudden flurry of activity at the back of the office, and then the manager himself came to the front counter, where I was still standing looking at my shoes some more.
‘What can I do to help you, Mr Tickner?’ he asked, clearly wanting to be helpful to a local MP, which had the unintended consequence of making me feel even more exposed and self-conscious.
‘I was adopted, and I’ve come to ask what I need to do to lift the contact veto I lodged at this office a couple of years ago. I know it’s a huge life step, but I think I’m ready to do it,’ I blurted out.
The die had been cast.
The manager explained the detailed formalities of the process. He also told me that counselling would be available at some future time to be arranged — apparently, this was the usual precursor to the lifting of a contact veto by an adopted person. But by the time he had finished speaking, I was much more in control of my feelings and confident that I knew what I was doing.
‘Thanks for the offer, but I’m honestly sure I don’t need counselling,’ I assured him. ‘I’m ready to proceed.’
Without any further delay, he organised the relevant documentation to lift the veto. I was grateful for his kindness.
In early December of 1992, I was ready for my next mission. I decided to lodge the application to seek out my original birth certificate, which would also reveal the name of my birth mother.
The day I made the decision, I was in Brisbane that morning, addressing a particularly volatile group of justifiably angry Aboriginal people in a large community meeting. They had come together to discuss Aboriginal deaths in custody and the follow-up to the government response to the Royal Commission. I had the job of coordinating the response across the country. These traumatised and grieving family members, whose kids, grandkids, or brothers had died in custody, were demanding answers as to why no one had been criminally charged by state and territory governments as a result of the deaths of their loved ones. Powerful and sometimes angry speeches were made by the grieving families, and, as was often the case in these meetings, tempers frayed and tears flowed. I didn’t want to short-change anyone present or show anything other than the solidarity I felt, so I stayed until the meeting ran out of steam. Everyone had their say, and I responded to the concerns that had been raised.
Quickly gathering my things afterwards, I rushed for the waiting car, feeling that this could be one of the most important days of my life — setting the wheels in motion to get my birth certificate, no matter what. My problem was that I had such a narrow window of time in which to get back to Sydney and lodge the application: it was a Friday afternoon, I would be leaving Sydney again for some time on Sunday night, and I would be absent again in other parts of the country throughout the period leading up to Christmas. Today was my one opportunity for quite a while.
By the time I got to the airport in Brisbane, I had missed my Qantas plane, so I ran the full length of the terminal to see if I could catch an Ansett flight. It was a manic race to the gate, taking wrong turns, and even losing my way. But I got there.
Arriving in Sydney, I rushed like a man possessed to get to the Births Deaths & Marriages office in Ultimo before it closed at 4.00 pm. I arrived just in time, with only two minutes to spare. I hurriedly completed the documentation, and the pleasant and courteous young man behind the counter told me that my birth certificate would be available on 6 January.
I knew that the waiting time would feel like an eternity.
8
First steps towards meeting my birth mother
I knew from the beginning that making contact with my birth mother was going to be a highly personal issue. There were likely to be considerable sensitivities around the meeting, and vulnerable people might be affected by my actions. It didn’t for one moment cross my mind to make public the issues I was facing. The idea of making this a human-interest media story or to exploit it for political capital was anathema to me, and looking back I’m still so glad I respected the rights and interests of others. My adoption reunion was one of the best-kept secrets in Parliament House.
Finding time to seek out my birth parents was very challenging. As Jody would agree, I was a far-from-perfect partner, with my ministerial responsibilities taking me away from home for most of the year. When I was back in the electorate, I was totally immersed in the work required of a marginal seat, including a phenomenal level of engagement with almost every community group and school. I just gave it my all: I was fulfilling a lifelong dream to serve my community as their local federal MP, and had the added privilege of being an ALP minister in a portfolio I passionately believed in. My travel schedule was ridiculously demanding, and, for most of those six years, I worked almost a hundred hours over a seven-day week, and ran myself into the ground. In my view, the minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs needs to be everywhere across this wide brown land, responding to invitations from Indigenous communities and leaders. But of course this meant that I had no real time to myself for my personal and family life.
Once, in the early days of my portfolio, before I got into my stride, my crazy travel schedule led me to make a fool of myself, much to the amusement of a local Aboriginal community — and much to my embarrassment. I ha
d flown across Australia to the Kimberley area of Western Australia. I had visited six communities in one day, before finishing in Derby, where I opened a new Aboriginal-operated supermarket. I thought I’d made a great speech, and felt a sense of smug satisfaction that it had been captured by a visiting documentary film crew. My self-congratulatory mood soon wilted when one of my staff told me that when I’d cut the ribbon and declared the supermarket open, I had triumphantly proclaimed that ‘this new venture will proudly serve the people of Broome for many years to come’. Broome was 220 km away. I recalled the quizzical looks the old Aboriginal stockmen of Derby had given me during the speech, and how the applause afterwards had been somewhat muted. I resolved never to make that mistake again.
The Tuesday after applying for my original birth certificate, I returned to my ministerial suite in Canberra and was welcomed, as always, by four Central Australian Aboriginal artefacts — snakes and lizards — spilling out of my office doors and looking as if they were about to escape into the corridors of the new Parliament House. They were placed there every morning, along with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags and the Australian flag, and they were very precious to me — especially the two-metre-long, highly realistic snake, which lives with me to this day. My staff and I had set the office up this way to show we were open and engaged with the Indigenous community. Even Liberal and National Party members and senators welcomed the display as a refreshing change from the blandness of parliament, and many brought their guests around to my office to see the artefacts. That particular day, I passed the welcoming party of carved reptiles and greeted my team members in the front office. Taking a cursory look in my red message book, I saw a note to phone a Mr Barry Miles (not his real name) on a Sydney number. The words ‘the application’ jumped out at me, and a chill ran up my spine. One way or another, this was going to be a very important call.
I closed the door to my office to be by myself, and, within thirty seconds, I was on the phone to Mr Miles. He introduced himself as a senior staff member of the Registry of Births Deaths & Marriages, and told me in a calm and measured tone, ‘I’m ringing you with some important news. I have your birth certificate in front of me.’
I audibly gasped, but let him go on.
‘Your mother is still alive, but has lodged a contact veto,’ he said.
I was mortified, and couldn’t find the words to reply.
After a slight pause, he continued, ‘However, this contact veto is not to deny future contact with you, but rather to have some control over the timing and manner of the contact.’
My spirits soared, but I was also in shock. I slumped back in my chair, then immediately bounded to my feet again, holding the phone to my ear and hanging on his every word as he continued to explain. He told me that my mother had written me a letter and gave me some information about the next steps. I can still so vividly remember that moment. It was unbelievably moving, and I felt privileged to be living through it. I was also deeply touched by the utterly professional and caring way that Mr Miles delivered the news.
For once in my life, I could barely string a sentence together. ‘You don’t know what this means to me,’ I managed. ‘You have touched me so deeply with this news. Is there anything more you can tell me?’
‘Not now,’ he said. ‘You need to see the birth certificate for yourself and read the letter your mother has written to you.’
I promised to contact him as soon as possible to arrange to collect the birth certificate and the letter.
‘You may wish to write a letter back to your mother, which will then be sent to her, if she wishes to receive it,’ he concluded.
After I’d hung up the phone, I got up from my chair, opened my office door, and just stood there dumbstruck.
My trusted friend and colleague Di Hudson was sitting nearby.
‘You won’t believe the phone call I just had,’ I told her. ‘They’ve found my mother, and she’s alive and wants to meet me. She knows nothing about me, but wants to meet me. There was a contact veto, but only to regulate contact, not to block me.’
Di knew that I’d applied for my birth certificate, and it was she who had put Mr Miles’s message in the book, so she knew exactly what I was talking about. She was overjoyed for me, but I sensed she understood more sensitively than I did the challenges ahead. ‘Don’t rush it,’ she advised me, as there were many issues yet to be worked through, and things could fall apart.
Still, I was stunned by the speed of events and by the magnitude of it all. I called Jody and immediately shared the news, but she and Di were the only people I told.
I was numbed by the news for some hours and, later, wandered the corridors of parliament in a daze. I am a very passionate person, but those passions and convictions are normally directed towards the interests of others. This, now, was an issue that affected me personally and deeply; it went to the core of my existence.
My next step was to make an appointment with Mr Miles to collect my birth certificate, but that was easier said than done. Parliament was sitting all the rest of that week, and then on Thursday, 13-year-old Jade was to fly to Canberra to meet up with me for a trip to Torres Strait for a major event on Friday. I had hardly spent any time with Jade, and so had sought special permission for her to travel with me. The only time I could arrange to meet with Mr Miles was on the Saturday night of our return to Sydney, and, due to my crazy schedule, he kindly made a special arrangement for me to collect the birth certificate from his home. Because of the sensitivity of the documentation, he thought it best not to post it to me.
Jade arrived on the Thursday and slept on the floor in my office until parliament rose in the early hours of Friday morning after a marathon session. I got a few hours of sleep in the office myself, and then at 7.00 am we flew out of Canberra on an air-force plane up to Weipa in Far North Queensland. From Weipa, we jumped on a small charter to Horn Island, and then travelled by boat to Thursday Island, where I was to attend a series of meetings with local community leaders who were advocating for a form of self-government for the Torres Strait Islands. The next day, Saturday, we flew to Melbourne where the land title of the former School of Army Health at Healesville was handed back over to Aboriginal ownership. Jade and I flew back to Canberra in the afternoon, where I collected my car and drove us to Stanwell Park. I dropped Jade at home, turned the car around, and drove to Sydney, arriving at close to 10.00 pm at the home of Mr Miles in the Eastern Suburbs.
At that time, I was driving my father’s old Nissan Skyline, which had huge sentimental significance for me. The car was a link with my dad and mum, and it felt as if they were with me as I took this big step.
Stopping under a street lamp, I wrote a letter to my birth mother, as Mr Miles had suggested I could do. He had said the letter would be placed ‘on the file’, and would be available should my birth mother want to read it. I was intrigued by the fact that my mother and I already had our own file, and felt it must mean something encouraging.
I found it difficult to know what to write in this very first letter. I was in uncharted waters, and deeply conscious of the need to reassure her and give her the confidence to put her trust in me. Here is the letter I wrote under that street lamp, unfortunately in my terrible scrawl, and left with Mr Miles for transmission to my mother. I squibbed on the opening salutation; I simply didn’t know how to address her. I also included a lot of identifying information, including my address and details of my work, none of which was passed on to her. This was because the adoption reunion process required such information to be shared in small steps, to protect the emotional wellbeing of both mother and child. Later, I was to learn of the grief caused by the rash actions of adopted children who confronted their birth parents without the support of expert guidance and mentoring.
19th December 1992
This is a letter I did not ever think I would write, only because I have had and still have a very wonder
ful life. I have always known I was adopted and it was never a problem of any kind for me. I have never felt any kind of resentment towards you of any sort.
The main reason why I have never sought to make contact is that I am a rather sensitive soul and would never have done anything to hurt the feelings of my adopted mother and father.
Dad died 6 years ago, and two things have changed since then. One is that my adopted mother is now 80 and her memory is failing. She is still wonderful but needs help to live and is in hostel accommodation. The second is that I have a 10 week old son, Jack. These two events have drawn me to make contact with you.
I feel very positive about meeting you and I hope you feel the same way. I have no expectations and would not want to make you feel uncomfortable in any way, but feel it in my bones that we should meet.
You will know from my name that I am the Federal Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, and I hope that my public life does not put you off. I assure you that I am a very down to earth person, and my adoption and seeking to meet you is very special and private to me.
Ten Doors Down Page 7