I had always known I was adopted.

There was no sudden revelation; no uncovering of a mysterious secret; no horrific discovery later in life; just an understanding and a knowledge that had lived and grown within me, as I moved through childhood and into adulthood. I don’t even remember being told, an indicator of how young I was when this aspect of my life was explained to me. I always understood that my father had told me, but I have no memory of the telling.

It was not until I was 8 years old that I realised other people might also know that I was adopted, even though I had never revealed it to anyone. There was no shame or conscious decision attached to that choice, just a feeling that no one else needed to know. But they did know. Sitting on the fence beside the school gate one spring morning, the boys threw the words at me, like a ball to be instantly batted away as far and as hard as I could, ‘You don’t know who your parents are. You are a bastard.’

How did they know? And what was a bastard?

The questions churned through me all through the long school day, accompanied by a growing feeling that being adopted was something shameful; something that made me different to everyone else. My mother’s anger was palpable when I told her the story, but it was never explained to me how those boys could have known our secret. I sensed now, that despite my parent’s words of reassurance, and their usual platitudes about adoption meaning I was ‘special’ and ‘chosen,’ there was some inherent shame attached to this state of being.

Life continued and although my adoption story was shared each year on its anniversary, it was a private sharing, just for our family of three. The story of my parents receiving a phone call which directed them to go to Melbourne because the Methodist Babies Home had a little girl they thought was just right for Edna and John, was told and retold annually, but rarely talked about in between. I never tired of hearing of the long train trip the childless couple took from Bendigo to Melbourne; of how they arrived at the institution in South Yarra, and peering into my cot, as they had peered into others several times before, I had kicked my chubby, baby legs and smiled at them. ‘She’s the one Ed,’ were the words the man soon to become my father had spoken, ‘She’s the one.’

I still have the receipt from Foys Melbourne Central dated 9/8/1960 for a bunny rug, 20 nappies, a matinee jacket, bonnet, booties, frock, 8 singlets, and a feeder, which Edna and John rushed away to buy that day. An investment of 8 pounds, 10 shillings and 5 pence. That’s how much it cost to bring a baby home in 1960. Then there was the long train journey back to Bendigo; the wet nappy which dampened my father’s trousers and the welcome to the family by my mother’s sister and her family, before we drove through the dark, whipstick forest, the grey Morris Oxford ploughing steadily ahead on the gravel roads to my new home in Neilborough.

I don’t remember spending much of my childhood grappling with the issue of having been adopted.

Even during my teenage years it was just knowledge that existed on the edges of my understanding. I was unaware of it shaping and influencing me. I adopted the lifestyle of my parents, their religious values and the expectations of two people who had not been able to produce a child of their own and so pinned all their hopes and dreams on this one, precious child who had been gifted to them. Adoption became a weight; a heaviness on my shoulders. I was in no doubt that I owed my mother and father a huge debt of gratitude for choosing me as the recipient of their undivided love. So, it seemed, my mission, my purpose in life, was to please them; to make them proud.

My son, my first-born, came into the world when I had just turned 26. As I had embarked on relationships throughout my teens and early 20’s it seemed necessary to tell of my adoption, especially when one of my boyfriends was found to have the same surname as my birth name. Until that point I had not even realised my mother knew my birth name. What else did she know? What gave her the right to hold these titbits of information and feed them to me from time to time as the whim took her? And so, by the age of 26 I had more questions than answers; questions that demanded answers. Discussions of the genetic factors that come into play during pregnancy; the gene pool my child was to be a product of; the possibilities; the unanswerable questions, drove me to do the one thing I had said all my life I had no desire to do – I applied for my birth information.

Almost two busy years of bringing up my own baby ensued before the phone call came.

I had an appointment to meet with an advisor at Copelen Street family services who would unwrap the secrets of my beginnings for me. So on January the 27th 1988 I walked back through the doors of the former Methodist Babies Home in Copelen Street South Yarra and with sweaty palms and a racing heart I was handed the papers which told me the ‘who,’ the ‘where’ and the ‘when,’ but not the why. I may never know why my mother, a single 25 year old woman had chosen to travel from her home in Tasmania to Melbourne to give birth to me in 1960. I do know that she eventually married my father, but 54 years later, they will not acknowledge me, so many of my questions remain unanswered.