What is it like to be adopted, have your identity changed and never feel quite at home in your new family, despite being loved? What is it like to become a social worker and be faced with the challenges and consequences of other adoptions every day? What is it like to hear the moving National Apology for Forced Adoptions by Prime Minister Julia Gillard in 2013 only to be faced a few months...

Ann Hannah was an ordinary, no-nonsense, practical woman. While a constant and caring presence in the life of her granddaughter Betty McLellan, she remained emotionally distant. 

In an effort to understand her grandmother, Betty has used Ann Hannah’s everyday expressions as a starting point to uncover the truth about her life. These words and phrases, heard countless times during Betty’s...

I am the statistic that I read about. I am the thing I always feared most. I am rape.

That morning, Michelle had presented her psychology thesis on rape. It began: ‘A woman born in South Africa has a greater chance of being raped than learning how to read …’ That evening, celebrating her degree, she and a friend go to the beach, where they are robbed, assaulted and raped.

Despite the...

In the cold winter of 1875, two rebellious spirits travel from the pale sunlight of England to the raw heat of Australia. Harriet Rowell (age 23) and Alice Moon (age 20) were champion swimmers in a time when women didn’t go into the sea; they were athletic and strong in a time when women believed men who told them if they didn’t bind their bodies in whalebone corsets they would fall over or ruin...