Dimensions
136 x 210 x 20mm
This is a story about three brothers who became "orphans of the living" just in time for Christmas 1940. Billy was six, Bobby was four and Frank (the author) was not yet three. The war began for them that year - and it lasted a lifetime. The book tells of the brothers' sad and funny life inside the Ballarat Orphan Asylum: cruelty and dark abuse, regular slops, boredom and fun, growing up with 200 brothers and sisters, learning to be orphans. After twelve hard-fought years, and after unexpected help from Queen Elizabeth and billiards champion Walter Lindrum, the boys were grudgingly returned to their parents.
But this book is not just about surviving the emotional wasteland of State care. At a second level, it turns on persistent questions: Where were their parents? Why didn't they come for them? Why wouldn't anyone tell them?
It would take fifty years for the author to learn what was going on outside the wall while he and his brothers were inside. An "irregular domestic situation", three foster mothers, two orphanages and the threat of others, and a "beastly crime". Their father got eighteen months for the crime and did his time, but the sons paid an extra six years for his sins.
The details of Frank's case are confirmed in the Senate Report that was tabled in Parliament the day before the announcement of the 2004 federal election.
