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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 8 Hansard (26 August) . . Page.. 2371 ..

MR WILLIAMS-MOZLEY (continuing):

My mother was 17 years old when I was born at the Salvation Army home for unmarried mothers at Merewether near Newcastle. She named me Douglas Raymond Williams. When I was seven months old, the Aborigines Protection Board and the New South Wales Child Welfare Department placed me for adoption. I was adopted into a non-Aboriginal family whose surname is Mozley. I was then renamed John William Mozley. This is the name that appears on my birth certificate. My mother's name does not appear.

After searching for 20-odd years, I finally located my mother. She was alive and living in Tennant Creek. I spoke to her for the first time in 1979, when I was 28 years old. She told me then that she never stopped believing I was alive and that we would meet one day. From the New South Wales Archives I learnt that it took nine years for my mother to return to Alice Springs. She was taken away as a young girl and returned to her country as a 21-year-old woman. In all that time, she was not allowed contact with her family, was prepared for life as a domestic servant and had her firstborn taken from her under some false pretence.

At the time of meeting my mother, I also learnt that I was in fact the eldest of her children and that I had three sisters and three brothers. My brother Kenny, who is three years younger than me, was taken away at birth from Alice Springs and placed on Melville Island. He was permitted to return to our family when 11 years old. My sister Elna was taken away aged three months. She too was placed on Melville Island and was permitted to return to our family when 10 years old. Her three children - one girl now aged 21 and two boys aged 18 and 17 years - were taken from her as toddlers and placed with adoptive parents.

My brother Paul was taken away at birth and adopted to a Greek family in South Australia. He grew up believing he was Greek. Through Link-Up we were reunited with Paul four years ago. He was 33 years old at the time and continues to find it extremely difficult to come to terms with his true identity and his place in our family. We believe there is a twin brother to Paul still to be located. The only information we have is that he was adopted to a non-indigenous family in Victoria.

Three years after being reunited with my mother, I had my name changed by legal instrument to John Williams-Mozley, to reflect the family names of both my natural family and my adoptive family. Three years later, my mother died of diabetes-induced kidney failure. She was 51 years old. I had grown up knowing I was Aboriginal. And, even though my adoptive parents had no knowledge of Aboriginal cultures, or Western Arrernte culture in particular, they had told me at the earliest opportunity that my mother was an Aboriginal woman from Alice Springs.

The only other fact they were told by the Welfare Department and the Aborigines Protection Board was that my grandfather was a policeman in the Northern Territory. As a result, I wanted to be a policeman just like my grandfather, and in 1967 - the same year the Australian population voted overwhelmingly in a referendum for Aboriginal people to be counted in the census as citizens - I was accepted as the first Aboriginal police cadet in the New South Wales Police Cadet Corps. I was one of only two Aboriginal cadets accepted in the 40-year history of the Cadet Corps.

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