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

* * *

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.

* * *

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.

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. She hated him. From the bottom of her heart.

‘Okay,’ said Jude. ‘How about this for a good shot, Miss World’s Greatest Photographer? How’s this? This do?’ With a vacant look on her face, her tongue lolling out and the bent knuckle of her little finger jammed at her nostril, Jude faced the camera.

‘Idiot! When you’ve finished pretending to excavate the roof of your antrum maybe you’ll act sensibly for me, huh?’  

As well as being sex crazed, Jude was also the most frustrating best friend anyone ever had, thought Miki. Always the clown. The bell would go soon and she really wanted to complete her portfolio for Family, Friends and Interesting Things by Caroline Patrick, and it would not be complete without the gate shot, their school years. 

She brushed the flies from her face and tried not to get herself into too much of a lather about the album but it was important to capture her subject under St Bren’s gates looking outward to the world beyond their college. She wanted her pictures to tell stories. The gate one would be about her and Jude and their future, about school and the big wide world outside that would be all theirs, one day. When they were both school teachers and had saved enough money, they were going to Tahiti. That was their big life plan. The Moon and Sixpence was one of their favourite novels. They were taking turns to read it to each other. Whoever had a daughter first was going to call her Tiaré.

She could feel the sun scorching her back and the sweat trickling down her legs. And the flies; she could do without the flies, she thought, flicking at them repeatedly. The flies were making it hard to keep her camera steady on the subject. All she needed was for Jude to stop clowning around long enough so she could click the shutter and then go down to the gates for the last shot, then to the bubblers and wash up.

‘Was it romantic? I bet it was.' Jude spun around, her arm hugging her waist as she looked up to the sky. 'Oh God, Mik, I bet it was so romantic!’ 

‘Please? Jude? Be a sport!’ 

She held the Box Brownie against her midriff, her feet apart, her head bent over the camera and her right eye focusing down the lens. The school building stayed where it was, but not Jude, the flibbertigibbet.

It was hard, however, not to love your best friend, frustrating as she was, thought Miki. Jude. Her sister. Almost. In everything but blood, they were sisters. She couldn't remember a time when Jude wasn't in her life. But she was also the most annoying creature on the face to the earth. Just look at her! 

She tried to control her giggles watching Jude skipping around the peppercorn tree and trailing her lunch paper behind her like some Chinese dancer. If Jude caught her laughing, she would be encouraged to keep clowning.

She let the camera drop to her side, her hand through the diagonal strap keeping it against her leg as she looked away from Jude’s antics to a vanishing point, something stationary she could concentrate on while she composed herself. 

'Donny, Donny, my darling. Make love to me, Donny,'  Jude crooned.

Flicking her plaits back over her shoulder, Miki moved forward with a scowl and a renewed determination. She had to get angry with her subject, start demanding some co-operation instead of this juvenile idiocy.

Wind had kicked up the playground dust. Taking a clean handkerchief, she flicked gritty particles off her lens, noting she had only three shots left on her roll. Would there be a moment this side of Christmas when Jude wouldn’t be cavorting around that stupid tree or pulling an idiotic face or preening like Ava Gardener or shoving a finger up her nose and sticking her tongue out like the village idiot? 

Or turning around and giving a bum show of navy bloomers to the camera? 

Click! The sound of the shutters opening and closing, a sound that usually thrilled her.

'Dam!'

Involuntarily, she had clicked the button and captured Jude's silly antic. Too trigger happy, she cursed. Too impulsiveness. She couldn’t use such a dopey photo, and she couldn't afford to waste film either. Now she only had two shots left. She wanted to show her family how brilliantly she was using their precious birthday gift. They already had a problem with Jude.  Lots of people did.

‘Brenner!  Do that tie up!’ The command came loud and shrill. 

Looking over her shoulder, Miki saw the speaker striding across the grass towards them. When she looked back at Jude, she saw rebellion in Jude’s eye. Here’s trouble, she thought.

‘Look at you! You're a disgrace, Brenner!’ The senior  advanced on them. ‘Let that belt out at least six inches before I report you,’ she said as she pointed at Jude’s tucked in waist-line.

The prefect was a pale, thin stretch of a girl, her uniform perfect in every detail, not a wisp of hair out of place, shiny shoes, school badges and her panama at the regulation angle. She stood with her arms folded and her feet apart, glaring, making it clear who was in charge. It was obvious from the look she gave Jude that she was not impressed with Jude’s disheveled appearance.

‘You're fine, Patrick. You can go!’ said the senior. ‘Go on, beat it. Go, go!’

Miki turned back to Jude. Oh God, don’t do it. Jude was responding to this mean Year-12 girl with her usual bad attitude. Jude hated being called Brenner, but more than that, she hated being told what to do by prefects. Jude had an aversion to prefects, and now she stood frozen in position, the long piece of lunch wrap held high above her head, her left foot poised ready to twirl herself into her scarf dance routine, and brazenly out-staring the scowling prefect. 

It was hilarious but if she giggled now it would only get Jude into more trouble. She saw how ironic that it took this sour prefect to finally get Jude to strike a graceful pose.  She coughed to cause a distraction.

‘Go! Go!’ the prefect yelled at Miki for the second time before turning back to Jude. 'You, Brenner! You are a little smart-alec Jew who shouldn’t even be at this school and wouldn’t be only Legacy’s paying your way. Everybody knows that.’

Miki stepped up to the girl. ‘Don’t you dare say that! It’s not fair.’

‘I’ll say what I like, thank you!’ The senior glared at her. ‘I told you to vamoose, didn’t I? What are you still doing here, anyway? Scat!’

Instead of moving off, Miki turned from the senior and faced Jude. It wasn’t fair on Jude, such an insult, but everyone hated this stuck-up prefect anyway, and it struck Miki that the girl might even be able to do what she hadn’t been able to do; get Jude to stand still and look half sensible. It wasn’t exactly the shot she'd planned, but a shot of the school building, with Jude in the foreground being arrogant to a prefect might fit the story of their school days, anyway.

‘Hey, Jude?’ she called when she had her subject in the frame.

The prefect stood glaring at the pair of them.

Jude looked at Miki. Her face lit up when she spied the camera. She gave a thumbs-up sign.

Miki looked down the lens. 

Jude straightened up.

Miki pressed the red button. 

‘Finally!’ she muttered to herself, rolling the film forward to the last shot. It was a shame that not all of the building was in the shot but she was already warming to this less formal and studied element of her art.

Under the continued scrutiny of the prefect, Jude made a half-hearted go at straightening her tie and letting out her belt. 

Judith Miriam Brenner––one of the school’s smartest students but also one of the school’s least co-operative students. Jude was high on their list of juniors to harass. The prefects despised poor Jude who couldn’t help she was Jewish. Couldn’t help that she was smarter than them. Couldn’t help that she wouldn’t stand for being told what to do. Not by idiots, Miki reasoned. Not by most people, if it came to that.

Under the prefect’s hostile gaze, Jude slowly and methodically picked pieces of lint from her navy box-pleated uniform. She pulled up her black stockings and polished the toes of her lace-ups by rubbing their dusty surface across the back of her hosiery. All achieved without taking her eyes off her persecutor.

Miki recognized Jude’s expression; a condescending smirk that would be read  by Miss Bossy Boots as insubordinate

‘Did you drop that?’ It was the wax lunch wrap, the Isadora Duncan scarf.

Jude stared insolently at the senior. 

‘Pick it up!’

Jude obeyed. She handed it to the prefect who scrunched it.

‘They yours?’ the senior barked, pointing at a pile of shrivelled orange peels scattered on the dusty ground a little way off.

Jude rolled her eyes. She looked down at the dried peel then threw a withering look at the prefect.

‘Did you drop them? Answer me, Brenner!’ The prefect came in closer, hands thrust on her hips. ‘Well, did you? Did you?’ the girl shouted.

‘Yeah...’ said Jude as she looked from the prefect to the desiccated peel and back again. ‘... sometime last century.’ 

Miki suppressed a giggle. One to Jude!  Prefect, nil! 

‘Well pick them up! At once!’ She put her hands on Jude's shoulder and pushed her down, hard to the ground. 'Every last piece!' She threw the lunch wrap at Jude. 'Do it, Brenner!'

Miki knew better than anyone about her friend's short fuse. She held her breath. 

But Jude took the bully's abuse as if she were born to be persecuted. She stared up at the senior from her crouched position in the dust and threw a military salute. ‘Yes'm!’ 

Jude’s resentment was reinforced by her tight smile. At her own pace, with attention to detail, and using only her left hand, she began gathering up the stale peel and laying them carefully on the spread-out lunch wrap. St Brendan’s authority was being challenged by the slow pace of the work. Miki could see by the rigid stance of the bully standing over Jude, the anger levels rising. 

‘Move it!’ barked the infuriated seventeen-year-old to the insubordinate fifteen-year-old at her feet. 

Jude smiled as one hand worked the ground and the other stayed in her tunic pocket.

‘Okay, then, Brenner. That’s how you want to play it? Then see me after school!’ The frustrated girl looked as if she might slap Jude's face any minute to settle the score.

Detention orders. The missed bus. The long walk home in the heat carrying heavy school bags. The two of them.  Good one, Jude, Miki cursed.

Jude was still bent over her one-handed job, picking up every last bit of dried-up peel as she advanced closer and closer to the large feet of the prefect towering over her.  

Jude's face was at the hem of the senior’s tunic. 

The prefect held her ground. Miki knew she had not seen the secret signal that had just passed between herself and Jude. Or seen what it was that Jude had flashed at her in her open palm.  

But she had seen it. And she knew immediately what was about to happen. And what was expected of her. 

She brought the Box Brownie to her chest again, and again, with steady hands looked down its lens. Her last shot, she realized as she kept her index finger poised on the red button and held her breath. Her last, but they had to do it. 

Jude shot her the signal.

She had the prefect's head and shoulders in perfect focus.   ‘Smile, everyone!’ she called out.

The stunned senior turned to look at the student she had forgotten about. 

In the space of that second, Jude sprung up and jammed the cigarette into the corner of the senior’s open mouth. 

‘Gotcha!’ said Miki triumphantly, as she heard the familiar click and lowered her camera to her side.

‘Tut, tut!’ Jude waved a finger as the apoplectic senior as the girl hurled the cigarette across the playground. ‘Quell horror!  Wait till Sister Augusta sees this! Wait till she finds out!’ called Jude to the retreating figure. ‘Or should we talk? About that detention stuff?’

They watched the older girl melt into a distant playground group. Miki returned the Box Brownie with its exposed roll of film to its leather case. She would need to save up her pocket money to buy a new roll of Kodak. But one thing was for certain; they would be on the school bus this afternoon. 

‘C'mon, genius. The bell’s going any minute,’ yelled Jude as she ran past, flicking Miki’s plaits. ‘Do you want to take this picture of me down there, or don’t you?’ 

Jude ran down the sloping lawn to the gates and positioned herself in front of the ornate ironwork, centring herself perfectly under the St Brendan’s College sign. Her body was slightly turned as she looked out onto the wide world beyond. 

‘What are you waiting for?’ she called to Miki, indicating the distant figure of their victim. ‘An encore or something?’

PART ONE